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ESSAY 



ON THE SUBJECT PROPOSED BY THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY, VIZ 



TO 



INVESTIGATE THE AUTHENTICITY 



OF 



THE POEMS OF OSSIAN, 



UOTH 



AS GIVEN IN MACPHERSON'S TRANSLATION, 



AJvD 



AS PUBLISHED IN GAELIC, LONDON^ 807, 

UNDER THE SANCTION OF THE HIGHLAND SOCIETY OF LONDON; 



ON THE SUPPOSITION OF SUCH POEMS NOT BEING OF RECENT ORIGIN, 
TO ASSIGN THE PROBABLE ERA AND COUNTRY OF THE ORIGINAL POET OR POETS. 

A PRIZE ESSAY. 



By WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND, D.D. M.R.LA. 



DUBLIN : 

R. GRAISBERRY, 

PRINTER TO THE ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 



1830. 







vr 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Section First. — Historic View of the Rise and Progress of the Ossianic 

Controversy, 3 

Second. — Macpherson's Ossian compared with the new Transla- 
tion of the pretended Gaelic version, 32 

Tldrd. — On the Imitations in Macpherson's Ossian, .... ... 56 

Fourth. — Of the Argument founded on the Excellence of the 

Poetry, 75 

Fifth. — On the Language of Ossian, 97 

Sixth. — On the probahle Era and Origin of the Poems attributed 

to Ossian, 114 

Seventh. — Fin Mac-Cumhal and Oisin were natives of Ireland, not 

of Scotland, 127 

Eighth. — On the Topography of Ossian's Poems, 143 

Ninth. — On the Era of Ossian, 153 



jj>n 



a 2 



POLITE LITERATURE. 



Subject proposed by the Royal Irish Academy — To investigate the 
authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, both as given in Mac- 
phersons translation, and as published in Gaelic, London 1807, 
under the sanction of the Highland Society of London ; and on 
the supposition of such Poems not being of recent origin, to assign 
the probable era and country of the original poet or poets. A 
Prize Essay, by WILLIAM HAMILTON DRUMMOND, D. D. 
M.R.I. A. 

Read May 25, 1829. 



SECTION I. 

Historic View of the Rise and Progress of the Ossianic Controversy. 

" Pudet in talibus ineptiis (Macphersonii scilicet) refellendis immorari." 

O'Conor, Hib. Script. Proleg. xii. 

That the subject of inquiry proposed by the Royal Irish Academy, 
relative to the authenticity of Ossian's Poems, may be pursued with 
most advantage, it is deemed expedient to commence with an historic 
view of the rise and progress of the Ossianic controversy. 

We learn from the Report of the Highland Society of Scotland, 
drawn up by Henry Mackenzie, Esq. and published in Edinburgh, 
1805 ; that Jerome Stone of Dunkeld was the first who made any 
collection of the ancient poems of the Highlands. Of one of these 
poems he published a translation in the Scots Magazine, for January 
1756, accompanied with a letter stating that those who have any 

b 2 



tolerable acquaintance with the Irish language, must know that there 
are a great many poetical compositions in it, and that they are tender, 
simple, and sublime. The specimen which he published, was entitled 
" Bas Fhraoich, or the Death of Fraoch, who was destroyed by the 
treacherous passion of his Mother-in-law." The original, with two 
translations, the one in loose paraphrastic rhymes, the other, close 
and literal, may be seen in the Vllth No. of the Highland Report. 
Neither in the poem nor in the letter, is any mention made of Fingal 
or Ossian. 

" About the same time, Mr. Pope, minister of Reay, in Caithness, 
well known for his abilities as a scholar, and his great knowledge of 
the Gaelic language, had thoughts of making a collection of the an- 
cient poetry of the Highlands, in concert with another gentleman,''* 
whose death put an end to the scheme. They wrote some poems, 
"said to be composed by Ossian," from oral tradition, "but could not, 
from the best information, learn that there was any manuscript of 
them in that part of the kingdom." On the publication of Macpher- 
son's work, Mr. Pope recollected that he had heard some fragments of 
Lathmon, and found that the Erragon of Temora is called Dibird fli, 
and the poem which mentions the death of Oscar, Ca Gaur, in the 
Gaelic of the Highlands. -f 

In June 1760, Mr. James Macpherson published, at Edinburgh, 
his " Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands, and 
translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language." These fragments were 
fifteen in number, and formed the first specimen of the celebrated 
poems attributed to Ossian. J 

On the appearance of these poems, the literary world was asto- 
nished. A new sun had blazed forth in the hemisphere, and all eyes 

* Report of the Highland Society, p. 25. f Id. .Appendix, 53. 

I Ritchie's Life of Hume, p. 137, 



were raised to admire, and all hearts were ready to pay homage to the 
splendid phenomenon. Scotland in particular was delighted. She 
flattered herself that now she had a poet who would rival Homer, and 
it became a point of national honour to laud and magnify his various 
beauties. We learn from a letter of Hume's, that every one was per- 
suaded of his authenticity, that philosophers and men of letters, the 
celebrated Adam Smith, and the Laird of Mac-Farlane, the greatest 
antiquary in Scotland, and Major Mackay, Lord Rae's brother, and 
the Laird and the Lady Macleod, to say nothing of names of inferior 
note, were all of one sentiment on the subject. It was now disco- 
vered, that in the Highlands every body could repeat the poems in 
the original, that the names of Fingal and Ossian, and Oscar and 
Dermid, were as common to the mountaineers of Scotland, as Caesar 
and Pompey to the old citizens of Rome, insomuch, that their favou- 
rite mastiffs were designated by those heroic appellations.* The 
happy translator, who had experienced how hard it is " to climb the 
slippery steep of fame/' now found himself transported, as by a sud- 
den bound, to its highest elevation. A liberal subscription was com- 
menced among the patrons of genius in Edinburgh, to reward his la- 
bours, and enable him to make a tour to the Highlands, to discover 
more poetical treasures. In that tour he fulfilled the object of his 
mission, and in the commencement of the ensuing year, published in 
London a new and enlarged edition of the poems, which seems to have 
obtained an extensive circulation, and added much to his celebrity. 
Blair, the distinguished divine and. professor of Rhetoric and Belles 
Lettres, became, through the influence of Home, the well-known au- 
thor of the Tragedy of Douglas, their zealous and decided advocate. 

* Lord Kaims says that Luath and Bran, the names of Fingal's dogs, were the appellations 
still retained. 



To fix their fame on a stable basis, he exerted all his ingenuity, and 
produced a dissertation on their authenticity, which is eulogized by 
Hill, his biographer, as "combining the subtilty of Aristotle with the 
elegance of Longinus."* In this dissertation, he founds his principal 
argument on internal evidence ; but not contented with this, he pro- 
posed to accompany it with certain documents corroborative of his 
reasoning, and, accordingly, wrote to Hume, in London, for his opi- 
nion as to the nature of the evidence which he should endeavour to 
obtain. Hume candidly replied, that he often heard the poems re- 
jected with disdain and indignation as a palpable and most impudent 
forgery; that he foresaw, if they were left to stand on their present 
footing, they would soon fall into final oblivion ; that for his own part, 
he had many particular reasons to believe the poems genuine, more 
than it was possible for any Englishman to have, yet, he was not 
without scruples ; that the manners, notwithstanding all the art with 
which Blair had endeavoured to varnish them, formed a strong reason 
against them ; that the preservation of such long and such connected 
poems, by oral tradition alone, during a course of fourteen centuries, 
is so much out of the course of human affairs, that it requires the 
strongest reason to make us believe it ; that the capital point should 
be established, not that the poems are so ancient as the age of Seve- 
rus, but that they were not forged within the five preceding years by 
James Macpherson; that the proofs must not be arguments but tes- 
timonies ; that the fact should be ascertained whether, as Macpher- 
son pretended, a manuscript of great part of Fingal, did actually exist 
in the family of Clanranald. 

With this advice of his sagacious philosophic friend, Blair seemed 
desirous to comply. He wrote to the Highlands, and received letters, 

* Hill's Account of the Life and Writings of Hugh Blair, D. D. Edin. 1807, pp. 39-40. 



setting forth what the writers, chiefly clergymen, knew of the matter.* 
He published the result in an appendix to the dissertation., but the ori- 
ginal still remained in obscurity. He ascertained no fact, and found 
no document sufficient to answer the demands, or satisfy the doubts of 
such sceptics as Hume. 

Macpherson soon found that he would not be suffered to sit down 
unmolested under the shade of his laurels. Notwithstanding the po- 
pular feeling and national partiality in favour of his work, many began 
to entertain the same scruples as Hume. All wondered how poems 
of such length could have been preserved by oral tradition in a rude 
country, and through a long series of dark and barbarous ages. A 
consideration of the changes to which all languages are subject? 
even when bound by the strictest chains of syntax and orthography, 
naturally created a suspicion that " the whole truth" had not 
been divulged. Morover, the manners which they described 
were so contrary to men's previous ideas on the subject, and they 
presented a state of society so different from that of the heroic 
ages of every other country, that they corroborated such suspi- 
cions. Notwithstanding the varnish of Blair, and the patriotic in- 
dustry of Lord Kaims, to prove that " the manners were Caledonian, 
and not pure fiction," doubts rose upon doubts. The timid whisper 
swelled into bold vociferation ; and the dread sounds of forgery and 
imposition were reverberated from the metropolis of England to the 
mountains of Caledonia. The luminous shafts of criticism flew thick 
and fast through the poetic mists of Fingal and Temora. The ghosts 
of Morven were heard to shriek in their airy halls, and the spirit of 
Loda trembled in fear of utter dissolution. 

Foremost in the van of Macpherson's opponents, stood the 

* Highland Report, 



8 

learned Doctor Samuel Johnson. In his Tour to the Western Isles, 
published in 1774, he has discussed the subject of Ossian with a 
strength of reasoning, which nothing but the clearest demonstration 
of opposing facts can ever set aside. By a force of mental compres- 
sion, which was eminently his own, he has condensed into a few sen- 
tences the sum of almost all that can be adduced against the authen- 
ticity of Macpherson's Ossian. " I believe," says he, " that the 
poems of Ossian never existed in any other form than that in which 
we have seen them. The editor, or author, never could shew the ori- 
ginal, nor can it be shewn by any other. To revenge rational incre- 
dulity by refusing evidence, is a degree of insolence with which the 
world is not yet acquainted, and stubborn audacity is the last refuge 
of guilt. It would be easy to shew it if he had it ; but whence could 
it be had ? It is too long to be remembered, and the language for- 
merly had nothing written. He has, doubtless, inserted names that cir- 
culated in popular stories, and may have translated some wandering 
ballads, if any can be found; and the names and some of the images be- 
ing recollected, make an inaccurate auditor imagine, with the help of 
some Caledonian bigotry, that he has formerly heard the whole." 

If Macpherson had answered these weighty objections satisfac- 
torily, he would have ended the dispute, and established his own 
reputation. But being of the irritabile genus, or, as Hume calls him, 
a " heteroclite mortal," one who thought, perhaps, that his genius 
should stamp authority on his words, and set him above the critic's 
scrutiny or suspicion, instead of vindicating his character and addu- 
cing his proofs, he thought fit to proceed by a more summary way, 
and threatened the critic whom he could not confute. He wrote an in- 
solent letter to Johnson, and was answered in the following " rough 
phrase of stern defiance :"* 

* Murphy's Essay on the Life and Genius of Doctor Johnson, 



Mr. James Macpherson, 

I have received your foolish and impudent letter. 
Any violence that shall be attempted upon me, I will do my best to 
repel ; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me ; 
for I will not be hindered from exposing what I think a cheat, by the 
menaces of a ruffian. What would you have me retract ? I thought 
your work an imposture ; I think so still : and for my opinion, I have 
given reasons which I here dare you to refute. Your abilities, since 
your Homer, are not so formidable ; and what I hear of your mora- 
lity, inclines me to credit rather what you shall prove, than what 
you shall say. 

S. JOHNSOX. 

Finding that the redoubtable critic was no more to be intimi- 
dated than Cuchullin of spears, or the car-borne king of woody 
Morven, Macpherson became convinced that his Ossianic mode of 
deciding the controversy would be attended by no success. Casting 
off the buskin, and descending from his Iambics, he caused the fol- 
lowing advertisement, in the name of his bookseller, to be edited in 
some of the public journals: "that during six weeks after the first 
publication of the poems, the original manuscript lay at his shop, for 
the inspection of the curious." 

(Signed) " T. Becket." 

Shaw affirms that this MS. was never seen ; that he had no MS. 
to deposit with Becket, unless some Irish one, in which, had an Irish 
gentleman gone to inspect it, he might have found the genealogy of 
his own family. For, he adds, "it is well known that the Earse dialect 
of the Gaelic was never written nor printed until Mr. Mac-Farlane, 

c 



10 

late minister of Killinvir, in Argyleshire, published in 1754 a trans- 
lation of Baxters Call to the Unconverted."* 

Shaw's conjecture, that he had an Irish MS. which he may have 
sometimes shewn, is strongly corroborated by Johnson's declaration, 
that the editor has been heard to say, that part of the poem has been 
received by him in the Saxon character. The Irish character having 
some resemblance to the Saxon, may have led him, from ignorance, 
to conclude, that it was the latter; unconscious how such a conclusion 
would expose him to the caustic observation of the critic, that " he 
had then found, by some peculiar fortune, an unwritten language, 
written in a character which the natives probably never beheld." 

In 1781, Shaw, the author of a Gaelic Grammar and Dictionary, 
published an inquiry into the authenticity of the poems ascribed to 
Ossian. He wrote in a bold popular style, and having evinced him- 
self to be a master of the Gaelic language, his opinions were calcu- 
lated to have no small influence in the contest. He stood boldly 
forth as " a sturdy moralist, who loved truth better than Scotland," 
and wrote with the earnestness of one conscious of the truth for which 
he was contending. He coincided in Doctor Johnson's arguments, 
and added to them all the weight of his authority derived from his 
knowledge of the history, language, and customs of the Highlands, 
as well as from having travelled through them, for the express pur- 
pose of gleaning information relative to the question in dispute. 
" Many mountains/' says he, "I traversed, many valleys I explored, 
and into many humble cottages I crept on all four, to interrogate 
their inhabitants. I wandered from island to island, wet, fatigued, 
and uncomfortable. No labour I thought too much, no expense too 
great, while I flattered myself with converting the disbelieving Doctor 

* Shaw's Inquiry, pp. 26-27. 



11 

Johnson, recovering some of the poetry of Ossian, and stripping Mr. 
Macpherson's brow of what I then used to call them, 'stolen bays;' for 
I then believed there might be an original, and that he rather wished 
to appear the author than the translator.''' He was frequently en- 
gaged in long discourses with the blind, the lame, and the aged; "but 
I found myself," he proceeds, "not a little mortified, when all they 
could repeat was nothing but a few fabulous and marvellous verses 
or stories concerning Fionn Mac-Cumhal, alias Fingal ; his Fiona or 
followers chasing each other from island to island, striding from 
mountain to mountain, or crossing a frith at a hop, with the help of 
his spear. There was much of enchantments, fairies, goblins, incan- 
tation rhymes, and the second sight. When I heard those of one 
country I heard all, for they all repeated in general the same stories ; 
and when I had the narration of a few, I had every thing/' 

Having no success in the way of oral communication, he turned 
his attention to the discovery of manuscripts. And here his inquiries, 
as he expected, for he knew that the Erse was never written, proved 
equally unsuccessful. He was told of one person who had a manu- 
script; but that person referred him to a second, and the second 
to a third, and the third to the first again, till having gone round the 
circle, he was at length told that Macpherson had carried them all 
to London. He found, indeed, in the possession of Mr. Macintyre, 
of Glenace, Argyleshire, a parchment manuscript of Irish genealogy, 
written in the Irish character, dialect, and contraction. It was shewn 
to him as containing the object of his search; but after much difficulty 
in decyphering it, he saw that it did not contain a line of Ossian's 
poetry. " Having made this fruitless inquiry/' he continues, "after 
the genuine Ossian s poetry, from which I only learned there never had 
been any, I passed over to Ireland, there also to pursue Ossian, and 
other inquiries. I rummaged, with the consent of Doctor Leland, 

c 2 



12 

Trinity College library, examined manuscripts, had different persons 
who understood the character and language, in pay, conversed with 
all who might know any thing of the matter; and, after all, could dis- 
cover no such poetry as Macpherson's ; but that the Irish had been 
more careful than the Highlanders, and had committed to writing 
even those compositions of the fifteenth century" 

An attack so bold and vigorous as Shaw's, if not repelled, must 
have proved decisive. The honour of Scotland was in jeopardy, and a 
champion arose in its defence. This was Mr. John Clarke, anonymous 
editor of "The Works of the Caledonian Bards," published in 1778, 
containing various epic, elegiac, and pastoral compositions of other 
Highland bards, different from those of Ossian. We learn from the Abbe 
Cesarotti, that he was a young Highlander of genius and understand- 
ing, and thoroughly acquainted with the Gaelic, which was his verna- 
cular tongue. The poems which he published, though ancient, were 
far inferior, he acknowledged, to those of Macpherson. For the 
authenticity of these he strenuously contended, and wrote against 
Shaw in a spirit of acrimonious invective ; representing him as " un- 
principled, selfish, revengeful, ungrateful towards his best friends, a 
flatterer of Johnson ; and above all, an impostor and bare-faced slan- 
derer, who was at perpetual contradiction with himself and truth."* 
As Shaw, when he put forth his first publication, entitled "An Ana- 
lysis of the Gaelic language," had been a strenuous defender of the 
authenticity of Ossian, Clarke makes a dexterous use of the arguments 
employed in that work; and in a part of his answer, called " Shaw 
against Shaw," convicts him of inconsistency, and thus endeavours to 
neutralize his conclusions. Such inconsistency, however, as may be 
fairly contended, was only a proof of Shaw's candour. In -giving up 

* Cesarotti's Dissertation, published with Ossian's Poems, in the original Gaelic, by Sir 
John Sinclair, Bart. vol. iii. p. 317. 



13 

his former prepossessions, and yielding to the force of truth, he acted 
as became a philosophic mind. It is not without weighty reasons that 
a man deserts or opposes the cause which he has once espoused, espe- 
cially if it be popular, favourable to his interests, or gratifying to his 
national vanity. Shaw, in his inquiry, seems conscious that he would 
expose himself to much bitter animadversion; and says, " if I have 
the approbation of the sensible, liberal, and discerning part of my 
countrymen, I shall feel little anxiety from the apprehension of the 
malignant virulence and personalities that may issue from the illibe- 
ral few. I never yet could dissemble, nor personate a hypocrite ; 
truth has always been dearer to me than my country ; nor shall I ever 
support an ideal national honour, founded on an imposture, though it 
were to my hindrance," (p. 72.) And again: "I should be as happy 
as any of my. countrymen can be, to have it in my power to produce 
the original, and to satisfy the world ; but, as not one line of it has 
hitherto been seen, but what Mr. Macpherson has favoured us with, 
imposed as a specimen, though actually translated from the original 
English ; I am so far a friend to truth, that I cannot permit an 
imposition to descend to posterity undetected. Had I been ignorant 
of the Gaelic, less credit might be expected to my narration of facts ; 
but having written a Grammatical Analysis and Dictionary of it, it 
may be readily believed I should rejoice to have it in my power to 
produce the originals of these poems to the public, as the Dictionary 
and Grammar might, perhaps, be sought after, to help the curious in 
forming some opinion of the original. Thus, it would be my interest 
to support the authenticity, did I think it honest," (pp. 102, 104.) 

This is surely the language of honesty and truth. No man can 
write in a style like this, from any principle but conviction. In an 
appendix to the second edition of his " Inquiry," Shaw replies to 
Clarke. He " rests the strength of his arguments on the mysterious 



14 

conduct of Macpherson, in withholding from the public the Gaelic 
originals,"* and says candidly, "if Fingal exists in Gaelic, let it be 
shewn; and if ever the originals can be shewn, opposition may be 
silenced." 

Another powerful auxiliary to the cause of Macpherson appeared 
in 1780, in a work of Mr. John Smith, minister at Kilbrandon, 
Argyleshire. This work is entitled "Gaelic Antiquities, consisting of a 
History of the Druids, particularly of those of Caledonia; a Dissertation 
on the authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, and a collection of ancient 
Poems translated from the Gaelic of Ullin, Ossian, Orran, and others. 
This was followed in 1787 by the publication of Sean Dana; le Oisian, 
Orran, Ullann, &c, ancient poems collected in the western Highlands 
and isles, being the originals of the translations published some time ago 
in the Gaelic Antiquities, by John Smith, D. D., minister of the Gospel 
at Campbelton." This collection consists of fifteen poems, eleven of 
which are ascribed to Ossian, the rest to three of the most celebrated 
of his contemporary bards. Smith follows close in the wake of Blair, 
whose arguments from internal evidence, he repeats. He thinks the 
prevalence of the bardic institutions will account for the preservation 
of the poems through so many ages. 

In 1783, Thomas Hill, an English gentleman, published a small 
work, containing several Gaelic songs and poems, collected during a 
tour through the Highlands of Scotland in 1780, but they were 
mostly of that class which Macpherson and Smith would have re- 
jected. This was unfortunate. Had he been so lucky as to stumble 
on an ancient copy of the real Ossian, how he would have been en- 
riched ! 

As it became the fashion to admire Ossian, it also became fashion- 
able to make collections of Ossianic poems. Foreigners caught the 

* Sir John Sinclair's Ossian, iii. 351. 



15 

infection, translations were made, and foreign presses took an interest in 
multiplying copies. We learn from the notes to the Abbe Cesarotti's Dis- 
sertation, that "in 1787 the Baron Edmund De Harold, colonel in the 
service of the Elector Palatine, published at Dusseldorf an English ver- 
sion of seventeen little Caledonian poems, which he had discovered, 
with the following titles: The Songs of Tara; The Song of Phelim; Evir- 
allen; Sulmora; Ryno's Song on the Death of Oscar; Malvina, a dra- 
matic poem; Rinfena and Sira; A song of Ossian after the defeat of the 
Romans; Bosmina; The Songs of Comfort; The Last Song of Ossian ; 
Sulima; Sitric; Lamor; Larnul, or the Song of Despair ; The Death 
of Asala; The Morning Song of the Bard Dlorah." All these poems 
the Baron ascribed to Ossian, except that of Lamor, which is supposed 
to be of more remote antiquity; and that of Sitric, which appears to 
be of the ninth century. Of these poems it is observed, that " the 
style is neither so figurative nor so bold as in those published by Mac- 
pherson. In Ossian's Poems no mention is to be found of any deity, 
while those translated by the Baron, on the contrary, are filled with 
the most sublime descriptions of the supreme Being. Macpherson's 
Ossian appears to have been a native of the Highlands of Scotland ; 
and De Harold's Ossian seems to be a native of Ireland." 

Ireland, it may be supposed, was not an uninterested spectator of 
these transactions. Till now her claim to the Fenian bards and 
heroes had no more been disputed, than her claim to Brian Boroimhe 
and his bard Mac-Liag. She heard with amazement of the usurpa- 
tion of her right, in favour of the Gael Albanach. Her renowned 
chief, Fin Mac-Cumhal, the general of one of her ancient kings, had 
undergone a metamorphosis beneath the spells of a sorcerer, called 
Macpherson, almost as great as that which he suffered from the in- 
cantations of the daughter of Gullen.* The Fenian chief was become 

* See the Irish Poem of The Chase. 



16 

the king of woody Morven, an obscure district in Argyleshire, the 
name of which, till now, had never been heard beyond its own limits. 
Her pride was alarmed, her history falsified, her literary glory threa- 
tened with extinction ; and though fully aware of the invalidity and 
falsehood of all rival claims, she was not at the instant prepared to 
confute them. The sudden and unexpected invasion surprised, but 
did not rob her either of the courage or the weapons by which it 
could be successfully repelled. 

A short time after Macpherson's first publication of Ossian, while 
he was in London, passing a second edition through the press, an ad- 
vertisement appeared in the Dublin Freeman's Journal, announcing 
the speedy publication of Fingal, " a poem originally wrote in the 
Irish or Erse language, and stating that the translation would set 
forth all the blunders and absurdities in the edition now printing in 
London." This gave Macpherson apparently just room to complain, 
" that a gentleman in Dublin accused him to the public of commit- 
ting blunders and absurdities in translating the language of his own 
country, and that before any translation of his appeared." The last 
clause of the complaint was untrue, for his translation had appeared 
in Edinburgh in June of the preceding year. But as no poem of the 
name of Fingal is known to exist in the Irish language, no Irish gen- 
tleman could have thought of making such an announcement. Theophi- 
lus O'Flanagan, Secretary of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, accuses 
Macpherson of having himself inserted that advertisement ; and the 
charge is, in all probability, well founded. Such an artifice accords with 
the disingenuousness of his whole character, and no doubt, it ren- 
dered good service to his cause in exciting public attention, and cre- 
ating a belief that an Irish original did actually exist. 

But nothing is more difficult than to carry on such a literary im- 
position long, without some untoward circumstance awakening suspi- 



17 

cion and leading to detection. Macpherson, with a temerity which 
experience afterwards taught him to correct, published some lines of 
the original of Temora, stating, that " the words are not, after the 
Irish manner, bristled over with unnecessary quiescent consonants so 
disagreeable to the eye, and which rather embarrass than assist the 
reader." General Vallancey, who had studied the Gaelic with such 
accuracy, as enabled him to publish a valuable grammar of the Irish 
language, was forcibly struck by these extraordinary observations so 
contrary to the experience of every Celtic scholar. The corruption 
of the Celtic in that single specimen, consisting of only twelve lines, 
afforded, in his opinion, " a striking proof of the novelty of the poem, 
or, if it be ancient, it is a proof," says he, "of the unlettered igno- 
rance of the ancient Gaelic Scots." This he illustrates by example, 
and adds, "if we were to criticise on every corrupt word in the twelve 
lines, it would require many pages." Such observations from a man 
of so much knowledge in Celtic learning as Vallancey, confirmed Shaw 
in what he says he always believed, that the specimen given by Mac- 
pherson, was his own translation from the original English.-^ 

The well-founded opinion of Vallancey was amply corroborated 
by the investigation of succeeding writers. In 1775 appeared "The 
Ogygia Vindicated/' a posthumous work of O'Flaherty's, published 
by C. O'Conor, Esq. The editor, in his preface, remarks, that Mac- 
pherson " forgot to prove how those poems could, through a series of 
more than a thousand years, be preserved among an illiterate people ; 
or how mere oral tradition, which taints every other human composi- 
tion, and corrupts its stream as it flows, should prove a salt for keep- 
ing the works of Ossian sweet in their primitive purity. He forgot also 
to assign a reason how that illiterate bard should be so descriptive of 
arts and customs unknown in his own age, and so silent of the rites 

* Shaw's Inquiry, p. 34, 

D 



18 

and customs which prevailed in it. He may, perhaps, find it easy to 
give such problems a solution by referring to the inspiration of the an- 
cient poets, who could foretel the future, and explain to their hearers 
what otherwise they could not understand. But we conceive that 
every critical reader will give a quite different solution, and not spare 
a moment for hesitation in pronouncing those poems mere modern 
compositions, collected by the industry, and shaped into form by the 
interpolations of the ingenious editor," pp. xiii. xiv. 

In the summer of 1784 Doctor Young, F. T. C. D. M. R. I. A. 
and afterwards Bishop of Clonfert, made a tour to the Highlands of 
Scotland, with the express view of collecting ancient Gaelic poems, 
and ascertaining, as far as possible, from what materials Macpherson 
had fabricated his Ossian. The result is published in the first volume 
of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy. He accuses Mac- 
pherson of having altered the dates of his originals, which appear to 
be the Irish Fenian Tales, of giving them a much higher antiquity 
than belongs to them, of suppressing the name of Saint Patrick, and 
altering both the form and the matter. He tells us that Mr. M'Arthur, 
minister of Mull, in reply to some inquiries of one of the Professors 
in the University of Glasgow, wrote to 'him that there were many spu- 
rious Irish songs wandering through the country, but to satisfy his 
scruples, he sent him four fragments extracted from the genuine 
poems of Ossian. The first and second of these specimens of the 
genuine Ossian, were found b}^ Doctor Young to be extracted from an 
Irish poem, of which there is a beautiful copy in the Library of the 
University of Dublin, entitled Laoi Mhanuis Mhoir. The third is 
taken from the Marbhrann Oscair ; and the fourth from the poem of 
Oran eadar Ailte agus do Maronnan, of which also there is a copy in 
the Dublin University. " It appears, therefore, that those spurious 
Irish ballads, as they are called by Macpherson and M'Arthur, are 
the very originals of which the former compiled his Ossian/' 



19 

Doctor Young was much surprised to find that out of so large a 
work as Temora, Fingal, and all the other shorter poems, M'Arthur 
should happen to select only such passages as occurred in the Erse 
songs that fell into Mr. Hill's hands or his own. "This," he observes, 
" seems to indicate, that the foundation of Macpherson's Ossian is 
much narrower than, perhaps, we might have suspected." 

In comparing the Irish copies with the Scotch fragments, and the 
poems published in 1786, in Gillies's Perth edition of Gaelic Poems, 
he found that the most perverse industry had been employed to corrupt 
and falsify the genuine Irish text, to make it accord with Macpher- 
son's fabrications. The name of Saint Patrick, though of frequent 
occurrence in the Irish, was carefully excluded from the Scotch 
copies, because the era of the saint did not synchronise with that of 
Ossian. The name of Manus was also excluded, and another substi- 
tuted, for a similar reason; and all such passages as represented 
Fin and Ossian to be natives of Ireland, were carefully expunged, to 
make room for a version favourable to the new hypothesis.* Every 
thing was done which it was possible to effect by suppression, addi- 
tion, and falsification, to give plausibility and currency to the grand 
imposition. 

"Talibus insidiis perjurique arte Sinonis, 
Credita res." 

Virg. 

Doctor Campbell, in his " Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and 
Literary History of Ireland," published in 1789, follows in the same 
strain as Doctor Young, whom he eulogizes as a writer whose "mind, 

* "Ex uno disce omnes" In the combat of Con, son of Dargo, and Gaul, son of Morne, 
the messenger of Fin is made to say, "For what cause have you come into Ireland?" But in 
the Perth edition it is changed into (the Gaelic of) "For what cause have you come into this 
country ?" 

D 2 



20 

during his whole course of inquiry, appears divested of prepossessions, 
and guided only by the love of truth. In his publication nothing is 
strained, nothing distorted ; his facts are collected with philosophical 
calmness, and his deductions drawn with mathematical precision." 

But notwithstanding the whole mass of Irish authority, historical, 
antiquarian, and critical, was so unhesitating, so unanimous, and so 
decisive, the question still continued to be agitated. Grave English 
and Scottish writers suffered themselves to be deceived, and the 
stream of history was in some danger of being polluted by the lees of 
Ossianic fiction. Not only did critics like Blair and Karnes delude 
themselves and others, but professed historians began to appeal to 
Macpherson's Ossian as to authentic historical documents. Whitaker, 
in his History of Manchester, published in London, 1773, says of 
those poems, that " they carry in themselves sufficient proofs of their 
authenticity;"* and acting on this conviction, weaves part of his his- 
toric web with the spider- thread woof of Caledonian fancy. "The 
last considerable attempt/' as he obligingly informs us, " to reduce the 
Caledonians, was made by the Roman Emperor in person, by Severus, 
and the collected power of the empire under him. And they were 
then subject to Fingal, the Vind-Gall or head of the Britons, the son 
of Comhall, the grandson of Trathal, and the great grandson of Tren- 
mor, a dictator fit to be the antagonist of Severus, and a chief wor- 
thy to be the hero of Ossian." f Henry, also, who wrote the History 
of England, expresses himself a sound believer in the authenticity of 
Ossian, and illustrates the subject of the early poetry of the Britons 
at great length, by copious extracts from Macpherson's Ossian's 
Poems, as if they were all genuine ! J But Irish writers, who had access 
to the real sources of Irish history and antiquities, were not thus 
deceived. They detected and exposed the novel theories which had 

* Vol. i. p. 24. f Vol. ii. p. 214. t Henry's England, book i. c. 5, 



21 

been presented to the public. In the preliminary matter of a learned 
work, to which reference has been already made, " The Ogygia Vin- 
dicated," the author animadverts with just severity, not only on the 
blundering inventions of the poet Macpherson, but on the historical 
"inconsistencies, contradictions, and impositions," of his friend and 
coadjutor Doctor Macpherson, author of certain fabulous " critical 
Dissertations on the origin, &c. of the ancient Caledonians," which 
endeavour to subvert some of the most clearly attested facts in our 
early annals. Wynne, also, in his History of Ireland, (published 
in 1773,) speaking of Whitaker, says, that so far from his account 
of " Fingal, sovereign of Morven, and chief of the Caledonians, 
bearing any token of the genuine Irish History, it has scarcely 
the resemblance necessary to work up the circumstances into a 
drama. If some of our northern neighbours took it into their 
heads to reverse the chronicles of Ireland, in order to make poems 
out of them, in support of their own particular prejudices, there 
is surely no occasion for our grave historians to follow in their foot- 
steps, and to insist, that, without any one real superior advantage 
over their neighbours, these Caledonians should know the history of 
that country better than its inhabitants, who profess to have kept its 
records for many succeeding ages." But a Scotch avenger of insulted 
historic truth arose in Pinkerton, a writer of pith and marrow, who 
did not hesitate to give his sentiments all that energy of expression 
which he could well command, and expose to merited reprobation, 
the attempts which had been made to overthrow, by shallow argu- 
ments, the positive testimonies of Claudian, Orosius, Isidorus, Gil- 
das, and Bede.* " God knows," says he, " our antiquities were too 

* Pinkerton's Essay on the Origin of Scotch Poetry. 
Macpherson says, in his Introduction to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, that 
he rejects the testimony of Ossian ; but, replies Pinkerton, " it is as false as if it rested on it. 
To say of his Introduction, that it " teems with every error which a man can fall into, who 



22 

obscure before, without having an additional weight of nonsense 
thrown around them. To ascribe poetry or romance to any age, 
though written by ourselves, is an innocent deceit ; but to connect 
such writings with ancient history, nay, to pretend to alter and cor- 
rect ancient history by them, is so strange a breach of modesty, that 
I know not what to call it, no similar instance occurring in the annals 
of literature. Mr. Macpherson's learning is very ill digested, as Mr. 
Whitaker has shewn the public ; yet, with all his ignorance of the 
ancient state of his own country, he has misled many. Doctor 
Henry, a Dutch compilator, though without Dutch learning, and 
Mr. Whitaker, a French visionary, though without French vivacity? 
may shake hands and congratulate one another on the solemn 
occasion." 

In 1804 appeared Laing's History of Scotland, with a Disserta- 
tion on the Poems of Ossian annexed. In this Dissertation the 
author has entered so fully into the subject, with such learning, 
taste, and discrimination, as to have left little to be done by succeed- 
ing critics. He exposes many of Macpherson's numberless errors, and 
dwells with great success on his imitations of Virgil and Homer, of the 
Sacred Scriptures, and several of the English and Scotch poets. He 
proves clearly from Macpherson's own admissions, that he had no 
original, and that it was " the shame of being known only as a trans- 
lator, that kept him from publishing the fragments " from which his 
work was constructed. " Such an idea," Laing justly observes, 
" could have occurred only to a person conscious that the poems were 



writes upon a subject without any knowledge of it, is not the greatest charge against that pro- 
duction. It also abounds with direct misquotations, in order to mislead. * * * * He 
says his theory is new, and he ought to have known that, of course, it is false. It would be 
quite new to assert that Xerxes never existed, and for this we have only history, as well as for 
the origin of the Scots." 



23 

his own, not to a genuine translator, like Pope \ Dryden, but to 
one unwilling to forfeit by a pretended translation, all claim to his 
own productions, or to the conscious merit of an original poet." 

This work of Laing's was afterwards followed by the publication 
of an edition of Ossian's Poems, with notes pointing out more parti- 
cularly the sources from which Macpherson had replenished his poe- 
tical urn. 

It might be supposed that such able exposures as these would 
have brought the question to a conclusion, and afforded truth a 
triumph in the complete extinction of all further belief in the authen- 
ticity of the Scotch Ossian. But some were still found, and the race 
is not yet extinct, who remained obstinately attached to their first 
opinion, so hard is it to eradicate established error, or expel a favou- 
rite prepossession. 

In 1805 was published the Report of the Committee of the High- 
land Society of Scotland, appointed to inquire into the nature and 
authenticity of the Poems of Ossian. This report was drawn up by 
Henry Mackenzie, Esq. with considerable clearness and apparent 
impartiality. The report is accompanied with a copious appendix, 
containing letters addressed to Doctor Blair and Mr. Mackenzie, 
from various persons in the Highlands, with affidavits and declara- 
tions, and specimens of Gaelic poems both original and translated. 
This work was followed in 1807 by an " Essay on the Authenticity 
of Ossian's Poems, in which the objections of Malcolm Laing, Esq. 
are particularly considered and refuted by Patrick Graham, D. D., 
minister of Aberfoyle. To which is added, an Essay on the Mytho- 
logy of Ossian's Poems, by Professor Richardson, of Glasgow Col- 
lege." In this work the author pronounces a handsome eulogy on 
the Highland Society, and lauds it for declining to enter into the 
argument, and maintaining a becoming reserve. " Anxious only to 



24 

collect facts, it has been little solicitous to offer opinions, or to enter 
into controversial discussion."* For its anxiety to collect facts, the 
Society merits the praise of its panegyrist. Facts are always valua- 
able. Give us these and we shall draw our own conclusions. Again, 
he says, " the Committee has thought it beneath its dignity, to stoop 
to the refutation of the arguments of Mr. Laing." Now we really 
cannot conceive that the Committee would have suffered any loss of 
dignity by refuting Mr. Laing. He was an adversary worthy of 
being overcome. He was their own countryman, a gentleman, a 
scholar, a member of Parliament, and an excellent historian. We 
rather think the Committee would have gained more dignity by van- 
quishing him, if they were able, in an honourable conflict, than by 
exposing themselves to the ironically sarcastic charge of having 
"been very laudably employed in collating one forgery with another, 
and giving their sanction to a very gross fabrication. "-f 1 But the task 
which the Highland Committee could not condescend to undertake, 
was, it seems, not beneath the dignity of Doctor Graham. Accord- 
ingly he has set forth in an ostentatious title, that he has refuted 
Malcolm Laing, Esq., but whether to any one's satisfaction, except his 
own, may well be questioned. As for " the sum of Doctor Johnson's 
argument on this occasion, he deems it of too small amount to re- 
quire any particular notice \"% 

In 1807 came forth, in three splendid volumes, " The Poems of 
Ossian in the original Gaelic, with a literal translation into Latin, 
by the late Robert Macfarlane, A. M.; together with a Dissertation 
on the Authenticity of the Poems, by Sir John Sinclair, Bart.; and a 
translation from the Italian of the Abbe Cesarottis Dissertation on 



* Introduction, p. 12. f Id. p. 13. 

X Laing's Preface. % Graham's Essay, Introduction, p. ix. 



25 

the Controversy, respecting the authenticity of Ossian, with notes ;. and 
a Supplemental Essay, by John M i Arthur, L.L.D.; published under 
the sanction of the Highland Society of London." This work seems 
intended to supersede the necessity of all further publication on the 
subject. Sir John Sinclair appears to think that it will fully confute 
all the objections by which the authenticity of the poems ever has 
been, or ever will be opposed. We have come to a different conclu- 
sion. We are of opinion that such a work alone was wanting to con- 
firm our objections, and that it has supplied additional proofs of the 
imposition. 

The principal evidence on which Sir John rests his cause, is, that 
" a manuscript of Ossian in Gaelic, actually existed at Douay, in 
Flanders, previous to Mr. Macpherson's having made any collection 
of those poems." Influenced by a laudable desire to arrive at the 
truth, and having heard that the Roman Catholic Bishop, Cameron, 
resident in Edinburgh, could give useful information on the subject, 
he opened a correspondence with him, and learned the following 
facts : 1st, That the Rev. John Farquharson, when a missionary in 
Strathglass, in the Highlands of Scotland, collected about the year 
1745, a number of Gaelic Poems, which were called by him Ossian's 
Poems, and which he affirmed were not inferior to Virgil or Homer ; 
2nd, and 3rd, That the said MS. collection was left by him, first at the 
College of Douay, then at Dinant, and lastly at Douay again, among 
his own countrymen there resident ; 4th, That it was written on large 
folio paper; 5th, That it was at Douay in 1777, when Bishop Chisholm 
left that place, but that it was then much damaged, and became so 
much neglected, that the leaves were torn out, and were used, so long 
as they lasted, to light the fire ; 6th, That in 1766 or 1767, Farquhar- 
son received Macpherson's translation, and compared Fingal and 
Temora, and some of the lesser poems, with the Gaelic ; 7th, That he 

E 



26 

frequently complained that the English version did not come up to 
the strength of the original ; 8th, That the Rev. James Macgillivray, 
a student of poetry and rhetoric, an admirer of the ancient classics, 
and a contemner of Erse poems, being converted by the translation of 
Macpherson, paid more attention to Farquharson's comparison than 
he would have otherwise done ; 9th, and finally, That Farquharson 
was a man of great sincerity and good information on the authenticity 
of Ossian. 

Such is the substance of the new evidence which Sir John Sinclair 
has brought before the public, and which he thinks capable of remov- 
ing the doubts of the most incredulous. 

That Mr. Farquharson did make a collection of compositions in 
the Gaelic language, is not disputed, nor that it was contained in a 
large folio paper book, about three inches thick, written close in a 
small letter. The evidence for this is satisfactory. It is equally so, 
that he was assisted in his studies by Mrs. Fraser, of Culbokie, who 
had made a similar collection, which she called a Bolg solair, written 
in fine large Irish characters, and that Mr. Farquharson acknow- 
ledged he had got a great many of his poems from that lady. But 
it does not appear that his collection was confined, as Sir John Sin- 
clair's proposition might lead us to suppose, to poems called by him 
Ossian's Poems, but that it was of a very miscellaneous description, 
and " contained," as the compiler was repeatedly heard to assert, 
"various Gaelic songs, a few fragments of modern composition, but 
chiefly extracts of Ossian's Poems." Bishop Cameron speaks of it as 
containing only " a very considerable part of what was afterwards 
translated and published by Macpherson." Mr. Macgillivray was 
convinced that it contained them all ; nay, it must have contained 
more; for he avers, that he "often heard Mr. Farquharson regret, 
that Macpherson had not found or published several poems contained 



27 

in his MS., and of no less merit than any of those laid before -the 
public." 

In these accounts are some discrepancies, not, however, of suffi- 
cient magnitude to invalidate the existence of the Gaelic miscellany, 
but to cause some hesitation in believing all that is reported of its 
contents. That it was left at Douay College, and remained there for 
years, seems unquestionable. It was seen there by gentlemen whose 
veracity we cannot doubt. But is it not possible that in some cir- 
cumstances connected with it, they may have been deceived ? It 
does not appear that any one of the witnesses whose direct testimony 
is given on this occasion, examined the MS. for himself, or formed 
any comparison between it and the translation. This task had de- 
volved solely upon Farquharson, and they are contented with repeat- 
ing his observations. Were they assured, or was Farquharson the 
compiler himself assured, that the supposed originals of Ossian were 
not transcripts of the Irish Fenian Poems, in which the names of 
Oisin and Fin so frequently occur ? Were they asked whether they 
ever heard the name of Patrick in the poems, or if any of them were 
in the form of dialogue between Oisin and the Irish saint ? Is it even 
clearly ascertained that any part of the miscellany was known or 
designated as the composition of Ossian, son of Fingal, prior to the 
appearance of Macpherson's work ? Was Mrs. Fraser ever heard to 
ascribe any part of her collection to the great Celtic bard ? Do not 
the Jine large Irish characters of her MS., from which Farquharson 
enriched his volume, point both to the true character and source of its 
most elegant " extracts ?" 

Admitting as we do, that Mr. Macgillivray and the other wit- 
nesses, whom Sir John Sinclair has adduced, have reported truly 
what they saw, heard, and believed, we should come next to the 
examination of Farquharson's character as a competent scholar and 

E 2 



28 

honest critic. But here unfortunately no data are given by which 
we can form a just estimate, or ascertain what respect is due to his 
authority. The only criterion by which we can form any judgment, 
is his declaration, that the translation falls short of the original, and 
that Ossian is " not inferior to Virgil or Homer." The latter decla- 
ration does not, we confess, enhance our opinion of his critical dis- 
cernment. But we shall not dispute : 

" Cedite, Romani Scriptores ! Cedite, Graii !" 

Some prefer Robin Hood's Garland to the Iliad, and think Will 
Scarlet and Little John much nobler heroes than Achilles and Ajax. 
As to the former declaration, it is worth nothing unless supported by 
proof. There are hundreds of Irish scholars at this moment, who 
will affirm that no translation can render justice to the beauty and 
force of their vernacular tongue. 

Our judgment of Farquharson must rest upon the credit which we 
attach to the testimony of his friends and admirers. That testimony 
is derived from memory, and after a lapse of many years. But me- 
mory, as all men know, is often fallacious. It supplies a few broken 
or insulated facts, which imagination combines, and endeavours to 
form into a consistent history. Mr. Macgillivray, the principal wit- 
ness, left the College of Douay in 1775, and thirty-one years after- 
wards, in 1806, informs us, that in 1766 or 1767 Farquharson first 
received a copy of Macpherson's translation, and compared it with 
the Gaelic. Prior to this event, Mr. Macgillivray had been obsti- 
nate in denying the merit of the Highland bards, but the beauty of 
the new version wrought a complete revolution in his taste, and, con- 
trary to the usual process, he found in the translation, perfections 
which till now had never been discovered in the original. His eyes 
were opened, and he was taught to believe that even the new version, 



29 

with all its superlative excellence, was but a faint shadow of the 
strength and majesty of the Celtic Homer. But Gaelic poetry, as 
he informs us, was now " frequently brought upon the carpet." 
Ossian was become a subject of national interest, and the ancient lite- 
rary renown of Caledonia, was involved in the question of his superior 
genius. It was equally involved in the question of his authenticity, 
and unless this could be supported, all would be lost. To settle this 
point, Bishop Cameron, in one of his letters, informed Sir John Sin- 
clair, that Mr. Macgillivray saw the greatest part of Fingal and 
Temora collated by Mr. Farquharson with the original ; and Macgil- 
livray himself says, " I have an hundred times seen him turning over 
the folio, when he read the translation, and comparing it with the 
Erse ; and I can positively say, that I saw him in this manner go 
through the whole poems of Fingal and Temora." This is strong and 
decisive language ; still we hesitate. Had he only made a proper use 
of some one of the "hundred" opportunities which he enjoyed, to 
take down in writing a few of the passages which most forcibly struck 
either Farquharson or himself, both in the original and the transla- 
tion, page for page, and line for line, and presented them to the 
world as a specimen of the mode in which the comparison was con- 
ducted, his assertions might have claimed more respect ; and we can- 
not but marvel that he did not execute this task, or induce his friend 
to execute it, both for their own and the public satisfacton. That Mr. 
Farquharson turned over his folio " an hundred times " to search for 
passages similar to those which he admired in Macpherson's Ossian, 
we can readily believe, and also that he may have found certain simi- 
larities of thought and of diction, with an identity of names. Such si- 
milarities are found in the Fenian Tales, from which, we feel confident, 
Macpherson took many of the materials of his centos ; and which we 
doubt not were, in the present instance, copied from Mrs. Fraser's col- 



30 

lection, written in fine large Irish characters; for even Mr. Macgilli- 
vray says, "he has a sort of remembrance, that he (Farquharson) fre- 
quently mentioned his having got a great many of the poems from Mrs. 
Fraser." That such poems as either Fingal or Temora ever existed in 
their present form, in the Gaelic language, until they were translated 
into it from the English, we are forbidden to believe by the irrefutable 
internal evidence, to say nothing of the external, by which such an 
hypothesis is overthrown. How many in the Highlands of Scotland 
have been heard to assert, that they well knew those who could repeat 
the whole of Ossian's Poems in their native Erse ? But when brought 
to the proof, it was found that they had only indulged a popular fal- 
lacy, engendered by imagination, from some bardic song or wandering- 
tradition. Could the Douay MS. be restored, and we regret as much 
as Sir John Sinclair himself, that it cannot, we are strongly inclined 
to think that it would corroborate the justice of our opinion, and shew 
that the poems which Mr. Macgillivray is pleased, after Macpherson, 
to denominate Fingal and Temora, are no other than Erragon, Mag- 
nus More, or some other of the well-known Irish tales. But if they 
were really what he supposes and affirms them to have been, is it, in 
the least degree, credible that their existence should be confined to 
a single copy, or at most, to a second, in the hands of Macpherson, 
while copies of far inferior compositions, are to be found in the libra- 
ry of every curious collector ? Is it not contrary to all human expe- 
rience to suppose that the worthless is preserved, while the valuable 
is left to perish ? Homer lives ; Choerilus and all the cyclical poets 
have died. 

But if there was only one copy left of the genuine Ossian in the 
original tongue, wherefore was it not preserved ? Why did not the 
friends of Scotland, in Douay, guard the MS. as the palladium of 
their country ? There is not, perhaps, in the records of literature, a 



31 

more disgraceful history than this of the Douay collection. Its fate 
reflects dishonour on all who had a knowledge of its existence, but 
particularly on those who should have felt an interest in its preserva- 
tion. Why were they so wanting to their country's fame and their 
own, as to suffer it to be destroyed ? Let it not be pleaded that this 
was done without their knowledge, or a consciousness of its value. 
Macgillivray, who is praised as "a great proficient in poetry, and 
much admired for his taste," saw it hastening to decay in 1775 ; but 
notwithstanding the interest which he appears to have taken in the 
general subject, he left it quietly to its fate. It was not, however, 
doomed to rapid destruction, neither was it surreptitiously removed 
by an Irish Ulysses, jealous of his own dear country's renown. When 
Bishop Chisholm left Douay in 1777, it was still in existence, and 
might have been saved. But he also forbore to take it under his pro- 
tection ; and thus, this most invaluable collection of Gaelic poems, 
this Ossian, " not inferior to Homer and Virgil," this precious and 
unique treasure is deserted by its best friends in a foreign land, to be 
treated as a thing vile and contemptible, torn and mutilated by stu- 
dents ignorant of its contents, and at last employed, leaf after leaf, as 
a substitute for fire-wood to kindle their stove ! And all this at the 
very time the Ossianic controversy was raging, when its appearance 
would have acted as a charm in stilling the noise of the combat, 
turned Doctor Johnson, with all his literary myrmidons, to flight, and 
for ever secured the triumph of Scotland, and put her enemies to 
shame ! Was there no library in Douay College, in which books 
might be safely lodged ; nor librarian, nor provost or rector, to pro- 
hibit the licentious waste of such valuable manuscripts ? We can 
imagine only one plea by which we think it possible to justify or pal- 
liate the neglect and destruction of Farquharson's miscellany, and 
this is, that it was not worth preserving. It would have rendered 



32 

no service to the cause of Macpherson. Living, it might have tended 
only to his exposure ; dead, it could tell no tales. But since it has 
fulfilled its destinies, and Douay students, ignorant cf Gaelic as 
Opician* mice of Greek, have celebrated its funeral rites in their 
stove, wherefore now disturb its ashes, or evoke its ghost to testify in 
behalf of the most audacious forgery of modern times ? 



SECTION II. 

3Iacpherson's Ossian compared with the new Translation of the pretended 

original Gaelic Version. 

The defenders of Macpherson's Ossian being foiled and van- 
quished in all their attempts to support its authenticity, have as- 
sumed a new position, and affirm that he was utterly destitute of 
the genius necessary to the composition of those exquisite produc- 
tions which bear his name. As a proof, they allege the failure of his 
translation of Homer, and conclude, that he fell as far short of giv- 
ing a just English version of the Celtic as of the Grecian bard. 
" When," says Graham, " we consider the rest of his literary efforts 
with an impartial eye, it is presumed that they will be found to exhi- 
bit an inferiority of genius and a mediocrity of talent altogether 
unequal to the splendid poetry, which, under the name of Ossian, has 
attracted the admiration of Europe." Poor Macpherson ! How 
dreadfully would he be mortified by such defences as this ! After all 
his industry in compiling poems for the honour of Scotland, to be 

*" Et divina Opici rodebant carmina mures." — Juv. 



33 

thus cruelly sacrificed at the shrine of the Celtic bard ! Every spe- 
cies of literary abuse is heaped upon his head. It is discovered that 
his genius never soared above mediocrity ; that he had not even the 
requisites of a faithful translator : that he was unjust to his original ; 
that he maims him by retrenchment, or deforms him by excrescences. 
His fate we cannot help acknowledging to be merited, but it should 
have been inflicted by other hands. He should not have had to ex- 
claim, "Et tu Brute!"* 

They who urge the charges of ignorance and incompetency 
against Macpherson, pride themselves on having the genuine Poems 
of Ossian to substantiate their charges. They are printed in a splen- 
did edition, with a Latin version, in Sir John Sinclair's work ; and to 
enable the mere English reader to determine how far the censures 
heaped on Macpherson are just, a new translation by the Rev. 
Thomas Ross, is printed with Macpherson's translation on opposite 
pages. To the former the following notice is prefixed : " The atten- 
tion of the reader is particularly requested to those passages in this 



* Ross, throughout the notes to his translation of the first Book of Fingal, in the first 
volume of Sir John Sinclair's publication, is unsparing in his censure of Macpherson. He 
accuses him of ignorance of Gaelic, of want of judgment and taste, and of frequent insertion 
of the ideas of other poets. In a note on a speech of Cuchullin, beginning at the 101st line, 
he asks, is this the language of a great commander, addressing his associates in arms, in a 
grand council of war, assembled on the most pressing emergency ? Or does it not rather re- 
semble the incoherent ravings of a madman P Again, he avers of some ideas in a speech of 
Calmar, lines 140-1 46, that they are borrowed from the speech of Belial in Milton, and have no 
more connexion with Calmar's speech than the ravings of Sancho Panza with the sublimity of 
Paradise Lost. Once more he tells us, that "the translator, hardly ever faithful to his original, 
departs entirely from the sense of the Gaelic poem, and disgusts his readers with the indi- 
gested and absurd extravagancies of his own confused imagination !" Finally, he condemns 
him for the stupidity of his conceits, for foolish pomposity of words without any conceivable 
meaning ; for borrowing from the Scriptures and other sources ; and for the random insertion 
of fantasies and absurdities too gross for any reflecting mind 1 



34 



translation which are printed in italics, as clearly proving the superio- 
rity of the new translation." With this request we shall comply, bring 
the two versions into fair comparison, and draw our own inference. 
The first passage worthy of notice commences at the seventh line : 



Macpher son's Translation. 

The scout of ocean comes 

Moran, the son of Fithil. 

" Arise," says the youth, " Cuthullin arise !' 

I see the ships of the north ! 

Many, chief of men, are the foe ; 

Many the heroes of the sea-borne Swaran !" 



Ross's Translation. 

The scout of ocean came 

The swift, high-bounding son of Fithil. 

Rise ! Cuchullin rise ! 

I see a mighty fleet from the north ! 

Haste, haste, thou chief of the feast ; 

Great is Swaran, numerous his host. 



We think we can perceive more taste, with more simplicity and pro- 
priety, in Macpherson's lines, than in those of his rival. He does not 
waste time in giving superfluous epithets to the scout of ocean. "I 
see the ships of the north," is less prosaic than " I see a mighty fleet 
from the north." The former expression particularizes the object, 
and intimates a knowledge and a fear of approaching hostility. The 
haste, haste ! of Ross after the rise, rise ! looks like rhetorical artifice, 
and " thou chief of the feast" unless a sarcasm were meant, is quite 
inapplicable to Cuchullin lying with his spear and shield by the wall 
of Tura. We, therefore, prefer Macpherson's " chief of men." It 
reminds us of avali apdpwp, our old school-boy acquaintance. We 
also deem Macpherson's repetition of many, preferable to the great 
and numerous of Ross. The epithet sea-borne, independently of the 
musical swell which it gives to the rhythm, is happily introduced, and 
the 15th and 16th lines, viz : 

"It is Fingal, king of deserts, 
With aid to green Erin of streams." 

are incomparably more poetical than Ross's, 

" Son of Fithil, it is Fingal, 
High chief of the dusky hills." 



35 

It is evident that the two passages cannot be from a common 
original. 



Macpherson, line 18. 

" I beheld their chief," says Moran, 

" Tall as a glittering rock, 

His spear is a blasted pine. 

His shield the rising moon ! 

He sat on the shore ! 

Like a cloud of mist on the silent hill !" 



Ross* 

" I beheld their chief," said Moran, 

" Their hero is like a rock, 

His spear like a fir on the mountain cliff, 

Like the rising moon his shield. 

He sat upon a rock on the shore, 

Like the mist on yonder hill." 



Mr. Ross is terribly severe on Macpherson for giving his lines as a 
translation of Ossian. For there is no such epithet as glittering in the 
original ; and what he says of the spear is " ridiculously absurd ; for 
it absolutely constitutes the spear a blasted pine; and no poet of real 
genius would compare the spear of a hero to a blasted tree, which 
conveys the idea of weakness, not of strength. * * * * The 
true poet of nature knew better things, and the image which he pre- 
sents to the mind is one of the most picturesque, sublime, and beau- 
tiful, in the whole compass of nature." 

Notwithstanding this "most sublime, ^and beautiful, and pictu- 
resque" panegyric, we are still so deficient in taste, as to prefer the 
old version to the new. If the hero were like a rock for firmness or 
strength, or any other quality, being clothed in mail he was like a 
glittering rock,* unless his armour had contracted rust from the salt 
sea spray, and this is not mentioned. The original of the compari- 
son of a spear to a pine, is to be found in the club of Polyphemus, 
which Homer equals to the mast of a ship, oacrov &' i^ov vrjog, 
Oddy. ix. 322. Virgil terms it a truncated pine. Trunca manum 
pinus regit, et vestigia firmat. — Mn. iii. 659. Our own great poet 

* In the first edition, the hero was tall as a rock of ice, but this being found too frigid a 
comparison, it was changed to a glittering rock. 

F 2 



36 



caught the idea, and enriched it with all his wonted power of ampli- 
fication : 

" His spear, to equal which the tallest pine, 
Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast, 
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand." 

Thence it passed into the hands of James Macpherson, Esq. 
being in the process of transplantation, blasted; and thence into a 
new version of his Ossian into Gaelic, again to be revivified and re- 
produced in an English translation, by the Rev. Thomas Ross, with 
all its leafy honours thick about it, deep-rooted and unscathed " on 
a mountain cliff." But we are of opinion that it would have been 
better to let the blasted pi?ie remain unmolested. It forms no unapt 
similitude to a spear; a fir tree on a mountain cliff, unless it be 
blasted, conveys none. Those whom all will acknowledge to be 
genuine poets of nature, never thought of such a comparison. Homer 
compares the giant's club, or walking staff, not to a tree growing, but 
to a tree whose growth was past, namely, the mast of a ship. In Virgil 
it is trunca pinus, a pine maimed of its head and roots; and in Mil- 
ton, a pine hewn to be a mast, of course stripped of every leafy and 
branchy incumbrance. The epithet blasted does not necessarily im- 
ply the idea of weakness, but of denudation. We do not, however, 
insist on its propriety. All we contend for is, that Macpherson's 
comparison is more just and natural, than that either in the Gaelic or 
in Ross's version. 



Macpherson, line 24. 

Many, chief of heroes ! I said 
Many are our hands of war. 
Well art thou named the mighty man 
But many mighty men are seen 
From Tura's windy walls. 



Ross. 

Leader of strangers, numerous 
Are the impetuous hosts which rise with thee, 
Fierce warriors of most desperate strokes, 
Whose swords are sharp in the strife of 

heroes : 
But more numerous and mighty chiefs, 
Surround the windy Tura. 



37 



From the most cursory glance of these lines, we should have no 
hesitation in pronouncing Macpherson's the original, and Ross's the 
imitation. An original writer is contented with a brief and simple 
idea or description ; a translator generally amplifies, and an imitator 
endeavours, as he ought, to improve. They often become paraphras- 
tic, and hope to merit the praise of originality for some new accessory 
thought or embellishment. The address of Moran to Swaran, in the 
above lines of Macpherson, is brief and appropriate ; his object 
being to intimidate the invaders by a statement of the number and 
valour of the foes by whom they were about to be encountered. 
This he makes simply and forcibly, at the same time paying a due 
compliment to the leader. Ross's lines have those marks of imita- 
tion which have been noticed. They are crowded with epithets. The 
effort to improve is manifest, and the attempted improvement itself is 
injudicious. Wherefore should Swaran be told of his own forces that 
they were numerous, and impetuous, of desperate strokes and sharp 
swords ? And how did Moran know all these particulars "of stran- 
gers" who had only just landed, who had made no impetuous attack, 
whose strokes were yet unfelt, and whose swords still slept in their 
scabbards ? 



Macpherson, line 42. 

Fingal says 
That the king of ocean fell ! 
But Swaran says, he stood ! 



Ross. 

Said Fingal the king, 
The chief of the ocean has fallen in the vale. 
He is not fallen, my answer was. 



The antithetical strength and brevity of Macpherson in these 
lines, are too manifestly superior to his rival's, with their unnecessary 
adjuncts, to require any comment. 



Macpherson. 
Dark Cuthullin shall be great or dead. 



Ross. 

Cuchullin, as undaunted as he, 

Shall conquer in the field, or nobly die. 



38 



Here Macpherson expresses with poetic energy in three mono- 
syllables, a sentiment which Ross renders weak and insipid by ex- 
pansion into nearly two whole lines, and one of them an heroic, con- 
sisting of ten syllables ! Who can doubt which is the original ? 

Cuchullin's speech consists of eight short lines in Macpher- 
son's version, in Ross's it is diluted into ten, of which the ninth con- 
tains twelve syllables, and the tenth eleven. " My heroes shall hear 
and obey " says the former version. The latter, of words more libe- 
ral, repeats a command already given, "strike, son of Fithil, the 
shield of Semo with speed," and adds, with colloquial bathos, "call 
in our heroes from the copses and woods," and this is a specimen of 
the genuine Ossian, which is to throw Macpherson into utter oblivion 
or contempt ! 



Macpherson, line 74. 

Caolt stretch thy side as thou movest 
Along the whistling heath of Mora, 
Thy side that is white as the foam of the trou- 
bled seas, 
"When the dark winds pour it on rocky Cu- 
thon. 



Ross. 

Stretch thy fair limbs, O Caolt, 
Whilst moving with speed from Mora ; 
Fairer than the drifted foam, 
On the face of a stormy sea. 



The " whilst " of Ross is a heavy word that clogs the speed of 
Caolt. " Drifted foam " is a happy expression. Macpherson's 
description is more amplified, but it is also enriched with the images 
of whistling heath, dark winds, and rocky Cuthon. 



Macpherson, 95. 

Iiike mist that shades the hills of autumn, 
When broken and dark it settles high, 
And lifts its head to heaven. 



Ross. 

Like the grey mist of autumn, 

Which closes round the mountain ridge, 

And binds its summit to the skies. 



39 



Binds its summit to the skies ! A palpable modern refinement ! 
To use the language of my Lord Kaims, a peeping out of the cloven 
foot! 



Macpherson, 124. 

Fingal, who scatters the mighty, 
As stormy wind the heath, 
When streams roar through echoing Cona, 
And night settles with all her clouds on the 
hill. 



Ross. 

Fingal, who disperses the brave, 

As the whirlwind scatters the grass, 

When the torrent roars through the rocky 

Cona, 
And Morven is wrapt in the robe of heaven. 



4 ' Scatter the mighty" is scriptural language. The strong 
"scatter" of Macpherson is preferable to the weak "disperses" of 
Ross, who employs scatter also in the second line, where it is not 
wanted, and thus violates the precept of the Roman critic, " verbis 
lassas onerantibus aures." Macpherson's "Night settling with all her 
clouds on the bill'," is a magnificent picture. Ross's " Morven 
wrapt in the robe of heaven," conveys no distinct idea to our minds, 
or if any, it is not in keeping with the whirlwind and torrent. If by 
robe he means the clouds, he should have employed a more expres- 
sive metaphor to harmonize with the rest of the description. A robe 
is a dress for beauty and majesty, and not for the rocky and stormy 
Morven. Had he wrapt it in a brown surtout, or highland plaid, we 
should have understood him better. 



Macpherson, 142. 

Amid the tempest let me die, 

Torn in a cloud by angry ghosts of men ; 

Amid the tempest let Calmar die, 

If ever chase was sport to him, 

So much as the battle of shields. 



Ross. 

May I perish by a blast from heaven, 
(Or, may I fall by the breath of a ghost ;) 
If I prefer not to the chase of the deer, 
The hottest conflicts of embattled hosts. 



40 



Laing says, " this hyperbolical rant is derived from Milton's imi- 
tation of Virgil:" 

" Caught in a fiery tempest shall be hurled 
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey 



Of wracking whirlwirids." 



" Ilium expirantem transfixo pectore flammis, 
Turbine corripuit, scopuloque infixit acuto." 



Milton. 



JEv. I. 



Macpherson's lines partake of the spirit of the great originals from 
whom he borrowed. They are strong and full of imagery. Ross's, 
as usual, are crowded with unnecessary epithets. The conflict of 
hosts would have been sufficiently significative without either hottest 
or embattled. The battle of shields is much better. 



Macplierson, 161. 

To me Cuthullin replies, 
Pleasant is the noise of arms, 
Pleasant as the thunder of heaven 
Before the shower of spring. 



Ross. 

Pleasant to me, said the chief of heroes, 
Is the hard crash of contending arms ; 
Pleasant as the thunder on the hills 
When the soft rain of spring descends. 



These lines of Macpherson have the character of originality, 
Ross's of imitation. In the former we see the first ideas as they spring 
fresh and vigorous in the mind of a poet, in the other an abortive 
attempt to surpass them by epithets and amplification. 



Macpherson, 165. 

But gather all the shining tribes, 
That I may view the sons of war. 
Let them pass along the heath, 
Bright as the sun-shine before a storm, 
When the west wind collects the clouds, 
And Morven echoes over all her oaks. 



Ross. 

Let the mighty sons of Erin arise, 

Let each band form itself in shining arms : 

With speed let them sweep along the heath, 

As a sun-beam on the mountain top, 

When the west wind blows from the sea, 

And collects the thickening clouds : 

A sound is heard from the tufted Morven, 

And from the leafless oak on the plain. 



41 



" Gather all the shining tribes," reminds us of the gathering of 
the clans, a comparatively modern practice. Men in arms and in 
orderly array before a battle, may be compared to sunshine before a 
storm. But what similitude have they sweeping along the heath, i. e. 
the plain, to Ross's sun-beam on the mountain top ? Ross gives us 
in the four concluding lines, what Macpherson expresses with more 
force and beauty in two. " Morven echoing over all her oaks/' is 
truly grand and poetical. How cold and insipid after this is the "sound 
heard from the tufted Morven and from the leafless oak on the plain ?" 
Can any one doubt that the latter is an attempt to improve upon the 
former, as tasteless as it is abortive ? 



Macpherson, 193. 

Morna ! fairest of maids ! 

Calm is thy sleep in the cave of the rock, 

Thou hast fallen in darkness, like a star 

That shoots across the desert ; 

When the traveller is alone, 

And mourns the transient beam. 



Ross. 

Morna ! fairest of maids ! 

Calm is thy sleep in the cave of the rock ; 

The delight of the people is fallen 

As a nightly star sparkling in the vale : 

The lonely traveller is sad 

When the light begins to fail. 



Macpherson's apostrophe is beautiful. What could more strikingly 
express the premature fate of Morna fallen in darkness, than the com- 
parison to a star shooting across the desert ? Ross's nightly star spark- 
ling in the vale, presents an image of permanent rural tranquillity. 
The original conception is totally mistaken and misrepresented in the 
Gaelic version, translated by Ross. What can be more flat and spirit- 
less than " The light beginning to fail ?" In the image of the genuine 
poet, there is no beginning nor progression. It is instantaneous, and 
conveys the most striking idea of transient, evanescent existence. 

G 



42 



Macpherson, 218. 

Thou art like the snow on the heath, 
Thy hair is the mist of Cromla 
When it curls on the hill, 
When it shines to the beam of the west. 



Ross. 

Thou art like the snow on the heath, 
Thy ringlets are like the mists of Cromla 
When it climbs the side of the hill, 
In the beams of the western sun. 



Ross is cruel in his reprehension of these lines of Macpherson. 
"This simile," he observes, " is one of the most elegant and beautiful 
to be met with in the works of any poet. In the original it is inimi- 
tably fine. The translation of Mr. Macpherson is a mass of absolute 
confusion, unlike to any thing in the compass of nature. The hair 
is mist. That mist one while curls on a hill, and again, shines to the 
beam of the west." What then ? Where is the confusion ? When 
he says the hair is mist, he means like mist, and every one under- 
stands the expression thus, as distinctly as if it were introduced in the 
shape of Ross's formal comparison. What is a metaphor but a brief 
similitude ? The one is as incapable as the other of being misunder- 
stood by any reader of taste. Macpherson's mist does not one while 
curl and again shine, but wherefore might it not ? It curls and shines 
at the same time. Ross has given us ringlets instead of hair, judi- 
ciously. But for a strikingly picturesque word, on which much of the 
beauty of the description depends, he has substituted another, by 
which it is impaired. The hair in Macpherson is like mist when it 
curls ; in Ross when it climbs. Were it bristled up like an angry 
boar's, or standing on end, "like quills upon the fretful porcupine," it 
might be compared to climbing mist. But the poet is speaking of 
the tresses of the " fairest of women," and assimilates them to the 
evening mist when it curls on, not climbs up, but pours down, or along 
the side of a hill, and is gilded by the beams of the setting sun. He 



43 



would no more have compared them to climbing mist, than a water- 
fall to a sky-rocket. 



Macpherson, 254. 

Long shall Morna wait for Cathba ! 
Behold this sword unsheathed, 
Here wanders the blood of Cathba. 
Long shall Morna wait, 
He fell by the stream of Branno ! 



Ross. 

Long shalt thou wait, O Morna, 

For the boisterous son of Armin. 

Lo ! on this sharp-edged sword, 

To its very back is the blood of Cathbat. 

The hero was slain by me. 

Long shalt thou wait, O Morna. 



Here again we discover evident marks of superiority in Macpher- 
son. As usual, he is more simple and delicate. The words which he 
ascribes to Duchomar, "Behold this sword unsheathed, here wanders 
the blood of Cathba," indicate the fate of her lover by his hand, with 
sufficient plainness, without the frigid tautology of Ross, " the hero 
was slain by me." The expression to its very back we have no doubt 
is common to this day in the Highlands. It is characteristically savage, 
and quite unworthy of the pretended refinement of the classic age of 
the king of tufted Morven. 



Macpherson, 287. 

She came, in all her tears she came ; 
She drew the sword from his breast. 
He pierced her white side ! 
He spread her fair locks on the ground ! 
Her bursting blood sounds from her side 
Her white arm is stained with red. 



Ross. 

Tearful and slow she came, 

To draw the sword from his side. 

He pierced the fair breast of the maid, 

She fell ; her locks were spread on the ground ; 

The blood ran purling down ; 

It was red on her arm of snow. 



This passage furnishes Ross with an opportunity, which he never 
fails to improve, of abusing Macpherson. He lays on his critical lash 
with so little mercy and so little justice, as to considerably diminish 
our compassion for his own egregious offences. " Here," says he, "the 

g2 



44 

translator, hardly ever faithful to his original, departs entirely from 
the sense of the Gaelic poem, and disgusts his reader with the undi- 
gested and absurd extravagancies of his own confused imagination. 
He tells us that Morna, who stabbed Duchomar, came afterwards, at 
his request, and drew the sword from his breast ; upon which, though 
the sword was in the hands of Morna, he adds, that Duchomar 
pierced her white side without a weapon, and then took the trouble 
to spread her fair locks on the ground. What a contrast to the sim- 
ple tale of the poet of nature ! It tells us that Morna approached 
Duchomar, to draw the sword from his side, but that as soon as she 
came within reach of his arm, he seized her by the breast, and by 
a last desperate effort of expiring nature, drew the sword from his 
own side, and plunged it into her heart. He adds, in all the simpli- 
city of nature, " She fell, her locks were spread on the ground." 

Notwithstanding this high-seasoned morsel of criticism, our fasti- 
dious taste is not satisfied. We think Macpherson's account of the 
fact is fully as intelligible and consistent as that of Ross. We under- 
stand from the former, that Morna did approach and draw the sword 
from the bosom of Duchomar. We are at liberty to suppose that 
she did not retain the sword, but rather cast it by his side, within his 
reach, or that he snatched it from her, and re-grasped it in his dying 
hand, or that he had his Highland dirk prepared to wreak his revenge. 
Any supposition is preferable to Ross's crude invention, that the ex- 
piring ruffian extricated the sword by his own efforts, and seized the 
maid by the breast, and pierced her white side. By the way, this 
improver and corrector of Macpherson is guilty of the gross inconsis- 
tency of giving Duchomar his death-wound in the side, then saying, 
" cold is the sword, it is cold in my breast, O Morna !" The critic 
is manifestly ignorant of the language of poetry, or he never could 
have made so silly an observation, as that " he took the trouble to 



45 



spread her fair locks on the ground." The English verb, spread, for 
instance, is often used, particularly in poetry, in a sense similar to 
that of the Hebrew conjugation, Hiphil, and signifies not the action 
of which we are the immediate agent, but of which we are the cause. 
"He spread her locks," means that he was the cause of her locks 
being spread, or dishevelled by her fall to the ground. When one 
warrior is said to stretch another on the plain, the expression does 
not mean, as Ross would interpret it, that he performed the office of 
an old woman, by putting himself to " the trouble" of stretching the 
limbs of a corse to prepare it for the coffin, but simply, that he slew 
or laid him prostrate. Sad penance to be obliged to descend to cri- 
ticisms like this! Ross says, the "blood ran purling down." So 
would blood from the scratch of a pin or the prick of a needle. The 
true poet says, the " bursting blood sounds from her side," thus 
intimating the depth, the force, and the fatal effects of her death 
wound. 

" Cruor emicat alte. 
Non aliter, quam cum vitiato fistula plumbo, 
Scinditur, et tenues, stridente foramine, longe 
Ejaculatur aquas : atque ictibus aera rumpit." 

Ovid. 



Macpherson, 350. 

It bends behind like a wave near a rock ; 
Like the sun-streaked mist of the heath. 
Its sides are embossed with stones, 
And sparkle like the sea round the boat of 

night. 
Of polished yew is its beam ; 
Its seat of the smoothest bone. 
The sides are replenished with spears ; 
The bottom is the foot-stool of heroes ! 



Ross. 

Behind, it bends down like a wave, 

Or mist round the cliff of a rugged rock ; 

Around it is the glare of gems, 

Like the sea round the vessel at night. 

Its beam is of shining yew. 

Its seat of polished bone, 

It is filled with spears, 

With shields, with swords, with heroes. 



46 

This is the description of the famous car of Cuehullin. Ever 
since its first appearance, it has furnished critics with a very satisfac- 
tory proof of its being recently constructed of materials collected 
from Homer, Ovid, and the Song of Solomon. But our object at 
present is, to compare Macpherson's description with that presented 
to us by Mr. Ross, as a faithful transcript of the genuine and original 
Gaelic. Ross admits that Macpherson, on whom, as usual, he is un- 
sparingly severe, "has borrowed, perhaps," some ideas from the Can- 
ticles that are not suggested by the original. The former, instead of 
saying that " its sides are replenished with spears, and its bottom is 
the footstool of heroes," says, "it is filled with spears, with shields, 
with swords, with heroes." Macpherson's version is unquestionably 
more elegant, and he should be forgiven for borrowing a few orna- 
ments from the Hebrew bard, only for the dishonest endeavour 
to make them his own. Ross, instead of presenting us with the fine 
image of the footstool of heroes, Jills the car with all kinds of arms, 
and converts it into a baggage waggon. He says, "that the absurdity 
of comparing the curvature behind the car, first to a wave near a rock, 
and next to the sun streaked mist of the heath, is not vindicated by 
the original, where it is compared to a wave or to mist round the cliff 
of a rock." The former comparison to a " wave near a rock," where 
it assumes a hollow curve, is just and beautiful : but Ross omits 
" near the rock," and so loses both the propriety of the simile and the 
beauty of the image. Why it should be compared to " mist on the 
heath," or " to mist round a rugged rock," we cannot discover; but 
if one of these comparisons must be admitted, we prefer the former ; 
for it may be mist driven by the wind, and its motion will be one 
point of resemblance at least ; but mist round a rock, gives us the 
idea of something stationary, and has no more resemblance to a war- 
rior's car rushing to battle, than a sleeping ward of invalids, to the 
British cavalry charging the enemy. 



47 



Throughout Ross's description both of the car and the horses, 
there is an evident effort, which as evidently fails, to surpass Mao 
pherson's, by the addition of epithets which can serve no purpose, but 
that of filling up the rhythm of the verse in the Gaelic translation. 
Macpherson says, " the rapid car of Cuthullin, the noble son of 
Semo." This must be improved, says Ross; and accordingly he 
writes, " the polished rapid car of Cuchullin, the noble son of mighty 
Semo." — " Before the right side of the car," says Macpherson, " is 
seen the snorting horse." We shall improve this also, quoth Ross; 
and forthwith appears : " On the right side of the noble car, is seen 
the high-blooded snorting steed." High-blooded, if we mistake not, 
betrays the "cloven foot." Again, Macpherson says, "the fleet, 
bounding son of the hill;" and Ross exclaims, the original is "swift- 
footed, white-nosed son of the hills !" Which has the superior claim 
to originality, let the reader judge. 

In " the embossed stones sparkling like the sea round the boat of 
night," we have a simile of great beauty. Ross has destroyed it in 
his version. Instead of embossed stones sparkling like the sea, he 
gives us with marvellous infelicity, the "glare of gems like the sea," 
omitting the very, and the only word, sparkling, which gives a true 
image of the phosphorescent or luminous appearance of the ocean, 
which does not glare, but sparkle. With equal infelicity he substitutes 
vessel for boat, and the prose at night, for the poetry "of night." 
The warrior's car might well be assimilated to a boat, which is in fact 
a floating car ; but the term? vessel, suggests the idea of masts and 
sails, and altogether undoes the resemblance. 



Macpherson, 363. 

The spreading of the mane above, 

Is like a stream of smoke on a ridge of rocks. 



Ross. 

The spreading of his forelock above, 
Like the mist on the dwelling of the deer. 



48 

Ross says, " the incongruous and fantastic figure of a stream of 
smoke on a ridge of rocks is not in the Gaelic poem ; but the horse's 
forelock is said to be like a small cloud of mist on the top of a hill." 
Here the text is at variance with the note, and contains nothing about 
either a small cloud, or the top of a hill. In Macpherson's simile we 
can trace some resemblance between the objects compared, in Ross's 
none. A horse's neck, to a fanciful imagination, may bear some simi- 
litude to a curved ridge of rocks ; and his mane, tossing as he moves, 
to a current of smoke, such as Macpherson must have often seen 
rising from a kelp-kiln, and sailing along the cliffs on the sea beach. 
But in the name of all the muses nine, and of all the ancient Irish 
and Caledonian bards, where is the resemblance between a horse's 
forelock and "mist on the dwelling of deer," i. e. mist in a deer park? 
Not long since, Morna's hair was compared to mist : how did the 
horse's mane or forelock become entitled to a similar comparison ? 
Macpherson has shown more taste and variety in preferring smoke. 

Nothing can be more injudicious than the description of the car 
of Cuchullin, by the timid scout of Swaran. He is described as hav- 
ing just returned from spying the approaching enemy, as trembling 
with fear, "his eyes rolled wildly round, his heart beat high against 
his side, his words were faltering — broken — slow" Instead of speak- 
ing in a style accordant to this character, and breaking out into a few 
hasty ejaculations expressive of his fear, and of the necessity of pre- 
paration for instant combat, he gives us a long elaborate speech 
of fifty-three lines, inflated with high-sounding epithets, and em- 
bossed with similes about mist and smoke, and gems, and foot- 
stools, and the boat of night, eagles, and winter storms, and the king 
of shells, and white-nosed horses ! We wonder he did not tell us the 
name of the farrier of these horses, with what metal they were shod, 
and the number of nails employed in the arming of their loud resound- 



49 



ing hoofs; and that he did not make Sulinsifadda or Dusronnal speak 
and prophesy like their prototype Xanthus, in Homer. Ross endea- 
vours to obviate some of the objections which have been made to the 
authenticity and propriety of the description, but with no success. 
" The minuteness of the description," he says, " can be considered 
as no objection whatever, as the whole speech," (though broken — 
faltering — slow — and almost the length of a moderate sermon,) 
" may have been delivered in the space of one minute and a 
half of time !" " And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last 
night. Oh ! against all rules, my Lord, most achronometrically . 
He suspended his voice a dozen times, three seconds, and three-fifths, 
by a stop-watch, my Lord, each time." Admirable critic ! We 
hope for the sake of the son of Arno, that Swaran had not Mr. Ross's 
stop-watch, and that he was not addicted to the sin of criticism. 



Macpherson, 485. 

The field echoes fi'om wing to wing, 

As a hundred hammers that rise 

By turns, on the red son of the furnace. 



Ross. 

The cry of battle from wing to wing, 
The roaring bloody hot encounter, 
Like a hundred hammers wildly beating 
Successive sparks from the red son of the fur- 
nace. 



Here again, we see the plainest marks of imitation in the lines of 
Ross. The translator into Gaelic seems to have entertained the com- 
mon idea, that to amplify is to improve. Hence he gives us a long 
string of useless adjuncts. The encounter is roaring and bloody, and 
hot of course. But why are the hammers made to beat wildly ? The 
rising by turns of Macpherson, gives us abetter idea of the measured 
cadence of hammer and sledge, with their alternate strokes. The 
word successive is clogging and superfluous. The original of the com- 
parison itself is to be found in the Irish poem, )<X0)T> f|l<t5fiujr 



H 



50 



rfiO)|t, in which the son of Comhal and the king of Lochlin are de- 
picted as striking fire from their mail, or encountering swords, like 
the sparkles from two hammers. 

" go mab be<xty<\ ^e b<x o/tb 
Compote p«;lteac <xn bo. 71^5." 

Thus paraphrastically rendered by Miss Brooke : 

" As when two sinewy sons of flame 

At the dark anvil meet; 
With thundering sound, and ceaseless aim, 

Their mighty hammers beat : 
Such are the fierce contending kings ! 

Such strokes their fury sends ; 
Such thunder from their weapons rings, 

And sparkling flame ascends." 

The two hammers of the Irish poem are multiplied by Macpherson 
into a hundred. The improver on Macpherson sets these hundred 
hammers wildly a beating; and another improver, for the knowledge 
of whom we are indebted to the Report of the Highland Society, 
p. 212, is so obliging as to inform us of the precise time when they 
are animated to their licentious frenzy. It is 

Is caoir theinntigh teachd a teallach. 
" When the bar comes fiery red hot from the furnace !" 



Macpherson, 599. 

Her white bosom is seen from her robe, 
As the moon from the clouds of night, 
When its edge heaves white on the view, 
From the darkness which covers its orb ; 
Her voice was softer than the harp, 
To raise the song of grief : 
Her soul was fixed on Grudar, 
The secret look of her eye was his. 



Ross. 

From her light robe appeared, 

Her heaving breast like the full moon of night, 

When its disk begins to emerge 

From the darkness of its shade to light. 

Her voice was soft as the harp, 

While she raised the song of grief. 

(Her eye was like a star.) 



51 

The reader will observe in Ross's version here the same fault of 
which we have had such frequent occasion to complain, the use of 
unnecessary epithets. Instead of Macpherson's " robe," he gives us 
"light robe;" instead of "moon," the "full moon;" when half a 
moon or a crescent would have answered as well. "When its disk be- 
gins to emerge," is technically astronomic, and not to be compared 
either in beauty or simplicity, to " its edge heaves white on the 
view." Heaves is, in this situation, one of those happy picturesque 
words, of which Ross seems to have had no perception. " From the 
darkness of its shade to light/' leaves us in doubt as to the precise 
image intended by the poet. Ross says, " the figure unquestionably 
is that of the moon beginning to emerge from a total eclipse." But 
he should have remembered that eclipses were objects of terror to the 
old Caledonians of Ossian's days ; that they thought such pheno- 
mena portended disastrous changes to the nations, as we learn from a 
passage of Macpherson, imitated from Milton ; and that, therefore, so 
judicious a poet as the great Celtic bard could never be so deficient 
in taste, as to compare his heroine's bosom to the moon emerging 
from an eclipse, especially when he could say with equal elegance, 
with not less meaning, and assuredly with far more simplicity, " from 
the darkness which covers its orb," viz. the shadow of a passing 
cloud. The attempt to improve on the original is obvious. Macpher- 
son has some meaning in saying, "the secret look of her eye was 
his." But what is the object of the other version in saying, in a pa- 
renthesis, "her eye was like a star?" By the way, this simile is 
borrowed from the Irish poem of " The Chase," where it is stated 
that the eye of Guillen's daughter, the fair enchantress, was like a 
" freezing star." 

We have now proceeded in our comparison of the two versions 
far enough for our own complete satisfaction, we trust, of our reader's 

h 1 



52 

■ 

also, and have arrived at a conclusion the very reverse of Sir John 
Sinclair's. He has stated it, as his opinion, that "whoever care- 
fully examines and compares the two translations, will be convinced 
that Mr. Ross's new translation furnishes the strongest possible inter- 
nal proofs, that the Gaelic was the original, and Macpherson's a 
loose, and in many parts, a turgid translation from that original. 
" He fortifies his own opinion by that of Miss Baillie's, the dramatic 
author, who remarks, that the new translation appears less pom- 
pous, more simple, and more appropriate, than that of Macpherson ; 
and besides being free from those particular images and forms of 
expression, which, in his seem to be borrowed from other sources ; it 
presents us with the story, and the images, and sentiments, that en- 
rich the story in a more distinct and defined manner, avoiding the 
great repetition of general epithets, which give to the other, notwith- 
standing all its beauties, a fatiguing sameness, of which many have 
complained. This I should think must impress the public at large 
with a belief that the Gaelic copy is the original, and Macpherson's a 
translation." 

We are sorry Miss Baillie ever penned these observations ; they 
compel us to believe and to affirm, that in them she has sacrificed 
her taste and judgment to complaisance ; and that had she fairly 
examined and compared the two versions, she would have dissented 
from Sir John Sinclair's opinion as much as ourselves. We beg the 
reader to bear in mind, that the passages which we have compared, 
are, with one or two brief exceptions, those printed in italic in Ross's 
version, as containing the demonstration of the Baronet's problem. 
Unless we are egregiously deceived, we have clearly proved the supe- 
riority of the parallel passages in Macpherson. They are less laboured, 
less bolstered up with epithets, in imagery more correct, in the choice 
of particular expressions more picturesque, and altogether have more of 



53 



the freshness and simplicity of an original. Such being our judgment 
from passages of Sir John's, or Ross's own selection, how much a for- 
tiori would it be strengthened, were we to institute a comparison with 
passages selected by ourselves ? But we waive our advantage, being 
fully satisfied that the Gaelic, from which Ross made his version, is a 
translation from Macpherson's English Ossian ; and that the materials 
of the latter are to be found in the Greek, Latin, and English poets, 
in the Hebrew Scriptures, and the Irish Fenian tales. 



ADDENDA. 

Mr. Laing informs us that " the original Earse of Malvina's dream, was produced by the 
translator at Lord Kaims's request. The greatest difficulty was to produce the English ori- 
ginal : for a ballad in blank verse of eight syllables, with a few occasional rhymes, may enable 
us to conceive the extreme facility of composition in his vernacular tongue. In the following 
verses there are neither the numbers of ancient, nor the ryhmes of modern poetry, nor the 
artful alliteration of the Scalds and of the Irish bards, but the same rude rhythm or cadence, 
with his measured prose." 



Se gut!) anaim mo riun at anu ! 
OV ainmic gu aisling Mhalmhin, thu 
Fosglaibhse talla nau speur, 
Aithriche Thoscair can cruai bheum 
Fosglaibhse dorsa nan nial, 
Tlia ceuma Mbalmhine gu dian. 



It was the voice of my love, 

Seldom art thou in the dreams of Malviua. 

Open jour airy halls, (halls of the sky,) 

O fathers of Toscar of shields, (hard blows,) 

Opeu the gates (doors) of your clouds ; 

The steps of Malvina (Malvina's departure) are near, 



On these lines he observes, that " if the massy halls of Selma, its towers, and its shaded walls, 
are inconsistent with the wattled huts of the third century, we discover here the gothic hall, 
and its doors by name. Talla, a corruption of hall, occurs neither in O'Brian nor in the old 
description of Tigh Teamhra, the hall or house of Temora ; — and dorus, a door, is a word 
equally universal among the northern nations, and inconsistent with Ossian. Speur, spier, 
the sky, is confessedly the Latin sphcera. * * * * The last line, the steps of Malvina 
in the first edition, of Malvina's departure, are near, is transcribed from Scripture, " the time 



54 



of my departure is at hand," 2 Tim. iv. 6. But the translator discovered that the Earse had 
no word equivalent to departure, as expressive of death, which was therefore omitted, and 
from the poverty of language, the voice of departed bards, was translated, gutk nam bard nach 
beo ; not being, not alive." 

We have quoted this passage from Laing, to shew not only the modern date of the Gaelic, 
but to give the reader an opportunity of comparing it with the second original which Mac- 
pherson produced, and Sir John Sinclair published. 

The latter runs thus : 



Se gutb ciuiu mo rain a t' arm ! 
Neo-mhinic gann gu m'aisling fein thu. 
Fosglaibh sibhs' bhur talla thall. 
Sbinns're Thoscair nan ard speur ; 
Fosglaibb sibhse dorsa nan neul. 
Tha Malmbina gu dian fo dhear. 



Est vox lenis mei amantis qua? adest ! 

Infrequens rara ad meum ipsius somnium tu venia. 

Aperite vos vestrum domicilium ultra (nubes) 

Proavi Toscaris arduarum spbaerarum 

Aperite vos portas nubium. 

Est Malvina vehementer sub lacrymis. 



There is such a marked discrepancy between the two versions, both in diction and ortho- 
graphy, that one might be excused for supposing them to be extracted from different compo- 
sitions. The fact seems to be, that the former was the first literal translation from the 
English, and that the second is an improved copy, which has undergone the same process 
of alteration as translations generally experience, and as is particularly exemplified in the spe- 
cimens quoted by Doctor Johnson of Pope's translation of the Iliad, in his life of that poet. 

The Highland Society, in the XVth Number of the Appendix, has published " Passages 
extracted from ancient Gaehc Poems, in the possession of the Committee, with a literal trans- 
lation by Doctor Donald Smith, compared with parts of the Epic Poem of Fingal, as pub- 
lished by Mr. Macpherson." 

These passages are collected from different sources, and have but a very distant resem- 
blance to Macpherson's English Fingal, and, of course, to its Gaelic translation. Some of 
them, we suppose, are borrowed from old Irish poems, lines and phrases at least ; others are 
of modern fabrication. " Son of Cairbre, from the red tree," chraoibh ruaidh of the red 
beanch, is evidently indicative of the Irish knights who were designated by that title. Instead 
of Cuchullin sitting by the wall of Tura, Daol, is represented in the first of these passages, as 
watching the ocean, and then hastening to apprize the king of Tara of an approaching fleet of 
invaders, led, not by Macpherson's Swaran, but by Garve, the son of Starno. His description 
of the chief shall be given here both in the Gaelic and the English, that the reader may com- 
pare them with Macpherson's. 



55 



Highland Society's ANCIENT Gaelic. 

Gum be sud am fear madhant 
Is e na stuaigb alia mara chagain 
Chite an Iaoch mar aiteal ceo 
B'amhail is cranti giusaich (a mhoid) 
Adii an corag naD cotlian dlutb. 
Mar am feur fa an osaig cbiuiD. 



Translation by Dr. Donald Smith. 

Their chief, dexterous in arms, 

Is a rock bending over oor shore, 

I beheld the hero like a spreading mist ; 

(Tall) he seemed as a pine of the forest 

In the array of the hosts, close waving 

Like the grass that is moved by the gentle breeze. 



Macpherson's Gaelic. 

Coimeas do 'n charraig an triatb, 
A shleagh mar ghinbbas air scor-bheinn, 
Mar ghealaich ag eirigb a sgiath : 
Sbiudh e air carraig san traigh 
Maran ceo tha thall air a bheinn 
'S lionar, a chinn-nidhe nan daimh 
Lamb, chomhraig, a dh'eireas leat fein. 



Ross's Translation. 

The hero is like a rock, 

His spear like a fir on the mountain cliff, 

Like the rising moon bis shield ; 

He sat upon the rock on the shore, 

Like the mist on yonder hill. 

Leader of strangers, numerous 

Are the impetuous hosts which rise wilh thee. 



Macpherson's English. 

Tall as a glittering rock, 

His spear is a blasted pine, 

He sat on the shore, 

Like a cloud of mist on the silent bill. 

FiNGAJL, Book i. London, 1773. 



Which of these is the original ? We have no hesitation in boldly affirming, the last, 
Macpherson's English ; because it is more brief and simple than the others, which are evi- 
dently amplified improvements. It is not to be imagined that Macpherson, with a Gaelic ori- 
ginal before him, containing the simile of the shield to a moon, would have omitted it in 
his version. In the subsequent edition of 1789, after he had time to embellish, he inserted 
"his shield the rising moon." which has accordingly been translated into the Gaelic, and pre- 
sented to a credulous public, as the genuine original composition of Ossian ! 



56 



SECTION III. 

On the Imitations in MacpJierson' s Ossian. 

In no place is Macpherson's Ossian more vulnerable .than in his 
Imitations. These meet us in every page ; they are visible to the 
most inexperienced eye, and assailable by the shafts of every young 
recruit of criticism. The defenders of Ossian are sensible of their 
weakness in this point, and accordingly exercise all their ingenuity to 
repel the attacks of their assailants. But in vain. Mr. Laing is an 
antagonist, whose keen and well tempered weapons they can neither 
blunt nor turn aside. 

Macpherson has exercised considerable skill in some of his imita- 
tions, and employed much art to disguise them ; but to hide was 
impossible. The prosaic form, which, for wise reasons, he preferred 
to rhyme, or legitimate blank verse, rendered them less liable to 
recognition. Even Gray, suspecting no fraud, did not at first disco- 
ver that some of his own poetry had been transferred to the pages of 
Ossianic fiction. But Mr. Laing, though in his younger days he dream- 
ed of nothing less than imposition, having his doubts once excited, 
entered on the inquiry, and pursued it with diligence and success, till 
it terminated in the clearest and strongest conviction. In the essay 
annexed to his History of Scotland, and in his edition of Macpher- 
son's Ossian, he has shewn that many of the choicest flowers of the 
pretended Caledonian bard, notwithstanding their new arrangement 
and connexion, were the original property of the poets of Greece, 
and the prophets of Judea. 



57 

In reply to the objection founded on the imitations, Sir John 
Sinclair gives the following quotation from a literary journal: " That 
Mr. Macpherson in the short space of time in which he was employed 
^translating the works of Ossian, should have scraped together such 
a quantity of unconnected passages as it is contended he has done, 
and that he should by a hint taken from one author, and a word from 
another, have wrought up such uniform and beautiful descriptions, 
as that of the desert Balclutha for example, are facts utterly incre- 
dible/' 

We cannot see where the incredibility lies. Macpherson, as he 
himself confesses, " served an apprenticeship in secret to the muses," 
and that it was the usual length of apprenticeships, seven years at 
the least, may well be conceded. He had also received a classical 
education, taught the classics, and was therefore familiar with some 
of the principal authors of Greece and Rome. He wrote and pub- 
lished the poem of the Highlander, with other poems, and of course 
had his attention early turned to Highland scenery. Writing poetry 
was the favourite occupation of his life. What time he actually em- 
ployed in fabricating Ossian, and in scraping together materials for 
the structure, has not been ascertained, nor is it a matter of any impor- 
tance to learn. But that he did scrape from various quarters the 
great mass of his descriptions, it is marvellous incredulity to doubt. 
Many also had been his pioneers in the same employment, and when 
he did not choose to consult the original authors, he could find 
enough for his purpose, at second hand, in such productions as the 
Gradus ad Parnassum ; FlavisscE Poeticce ; and in Bysshe's and 
Gildon's Arts of Poetry. Macpherson, in his preface, has asserted 
that If the making of poetry, like any other handicraft, may be 
learned by industry ;" and his Ossian is exactly such a proof and 
illustration of his assertion as we should expect. It is a fine specie 

I 



58 

men of that handicraft poetry, which by some taste in the arts of 
joining and gluing, of dovetailing and varnishing, may be formed 
from the membra disjecta of other poets. No draught from Helicon, 
or inspiration from Urania is necessary to the artificer. He is the 
poet that is made, not born — an image of clay without the prome- 
thean fire — one of the serv urn pecus of Horace, not the vates egregius 
of Juvenal. 

Cui non sit publica vena, 
Qui nihil expositum soleat deducere, nee qui 
Communi feriat carmen triviale moneta. 

Juv. Sat. vii. 53. 

Not he, the bard of every age and clime, 
Of genius fruitful and of soul sublime, 
Who from the glowing mint of fancy pours 
No spurious metal fused from common ores, 
But gold, to matchless purity refined, 
And stamp'd with all the godhead in his mind. 

Gifford. 

Doctor Graham, as well as Sir John Sinclair's critic in the Literary 
Journal, thinks it incredible, that Macpherson could be the artificer 
of his curious poetical mosaic work. He expatiates on the univer- 
sity education of Macpherson : "his mind," says he, "was enriched 
with the stores of ancient and modern literature ; he was familiarized 
from an early period of life to the modes of acting, and thinking, 
and expressing himself, which characterize the scholar of the present 
times. That a person of such education, and of such habits of think- 
ing, should so completely divest himself of all his previous acquisi- 
tions in literature and science, and of every idea rendered familiar to 
him by long use ; and that he should be able to write with uniform 
consistency, in the character of a person who is supposed to have lived 
fourteen hundred years ago, and in a state of society so very difFe- 



rent from the present order of things ; in short, that a modern Euro- 
pean should produce such a work as the poetry of Ossian, distin- 
guished exclusively by the ideas peculiar to a people in the most sim- 
ple state of society ; all these, I confess, I must consider as efforts 
beyond the reach of humanity." 

From which confession we are obliged to infer that its author did 
not take sufficient pains to inform himself of what humanity is capa- 
ble of effecting, or he would have considered the poetry which he 
eulogizes as within the compass of very ordinary powers. Indeed, 
had Macpherson been destitute of those literary stores, both ancient 
and modern, with which his mind was enriched, there would have 
been some validity in the argument. But as it is stated, the very 
premises expose the fallacy of the conclusion. Were it even true, 
which we are far from admitting, that the poetry is " distinguished 
exclusively by the ideas peculiar to a people in the most simple state 
of society ;" what would such a truth prove more than this, that the 
author had carefully observed those laws which the nature of his 
work required, and which he could not violate without shocking all 
probability ? A poet who sits down to write a pastoral, if he is not 
ignorant of his art, knows that he ought not, and of course will not, 
introduce ideas foreign to the pastoral life. He will not give his 
shepherds the manners of courtiers, nor present his goatherds disput- 
ing about metaphysics. The dramatic writer who lays his scene on 
the borders of the artic circle, will be careful how he employs the 
imagery of the tropics. He is an unskilful artist who covers his can- 
vas with incongruities, who paints a dolphin in the woods and a boar 
in the waves. Macpherson knew this well, and having fixed on an 
age and country for his pastoral epics, he exercised as much skill as 
he possessed to make his colouring and imagery correspond. But 
after all his care, he did not succeed so happily as to hide his artifice. 

i 2 



He endeavoured to form a statue of surpassing beauty, but failed in 
the execution. It proved to be the monster with the horse's head 
and the fish's tail, clothed with rich and gaudy plumage, contributed 
by all the birds of the air. 

Doctor Graham assumes it as a fact not to be contested, that 
Macpherson's Ossian is a collection of super-excellent poetry ; that it 
is perfectly inimitable ; that the loftiest flights of Pindar, and the 
sustained sublimities of Homer, fall far below the elevated soarings 
of the Caledonian swan. Such extravagant panegyric amuses and 
disgusts by turns. That the poetry has beauties we do not deny ; 
but that they are transplanted from a foreign soil, we should think 
apparent to every unprejudiced judge. Notwithstanding, Doctor 
Graham, and the critics of his school, labour industriously to shew 
that they are the indigenous growth of the Highlands, and that cer- 
tain coincidences both of thought and expression, may be traced in 
authors who lived in ages and countries most remote from each other. 
There are passages in Homer, and in the Sacred Scriptures, which have 
a mutual resemblance, and yet no one will pretend that the one is an 
original, and the other an imitation. To illustrate this, the words of the 
Patriarch Jacob, " Ye will bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to 
the grave," are compared with those of Priam, lamenting for his son 
- Hector, ov ft a^og 6%v Karoiasrai aiSog ektoj, " my sharp sorrow 
for whom will bring me down to the grave." A more apt illustra- 
tion might have been selected. The thought in both passages is un- 
questionably similar. It is one of those common-place ideas which 
are to be found in all languages. But the dress and imagery in 
which it is arrayed in the Scriptures, make it peculiarly their own. 
In Homer, grief is the agent. In Scripture, the agents are the 
Patriarch's own sons, a consideration which must add poignancy to 
his grief, and heighten our sympathy. The grey hairs present us 



61 

with an image as pathetic as it is picturesque. There is nothing like 
it in Homer. 

Graham argues with plausibility, that the aspect of external na- 
ture, and the constitution of the human mind, are every where the 
same, and that consequently we need not be surprised to meet paral- 
lelisms of thought and expression in different languages. This, to a 
certain extent, is admitted. But it is not for some casual coinci- 
dences, nor " vague similarities," as Doctor Graham is pleased to 
term Macpherson's plagiarisms, quoted by Mr. Laing, nor on princi- 
ples like those by which Fluellan identified Macedonia and Mon- 
mouth, that the English Ossian is accused; but for broad, plain, 
palpable, and frequent imitation of thought, of diction, and even of 
singular structure of sentences. There are certain peculiarities of 
sentiment, of manners, of imagery and expression, which, belonging 
exclusively to one region, are no more to be expected in another, than 
rein deer on the sands of the torrid zone, or the elephant in Siberia. 
Who would not be amazed to hear the epics of Homer rhapsodized 
by a Celtic bard, or the Canticles of Solomon warbled forth in the 
songs of Selma ? 

We cannot attribute it to mere casual coincidence, that many of 
Ossian's similes have not only a general, but a very particular 
resemblance to those of the greatest poets, though presented to 
us in various guise, with different appendages, and in different 
colours. We might pass over the comparison of the two sons of 
Usnoth, to " two young trees in the valley, growing in a shower/' 
though we can find something like it in Homer ; and Fingal's ques- 
tion, "stand they like a silent wood?" and "the white-bosomed 
maids, beholding them above like a grove ;" and again, in the 
same poem, Carthon, they " stood like a silent grove that lifts its 
head in Gormal." But what shall we say, when we find the same 



comparison dilated into the following ? " stood Erin's few sad sons, 
like a grove through which the flame had rushed, hurried on by the 
winds of the stormy night ; distant, withered, dark, they stand with 
not a leaf to shake in the gale ;" and again, " Lochlin stands like a half 
consumed grove of oaks, when we see the sky through its branches, 
and the meteor passing behind." We think we have seen the same 
grove of oaks before in a different scene, and though without the 
accompaniment of the sky, and the omnipresent Ossianic meteor, 
not less magnificent, nor less powerfully depicted ; and we cannot 
resist the conviction, that we should never have seen it in Ossian, 
had it not previously appeared in Milton and Virgil. 

Faithful how they stood, 

Their glory withered, as when heaven's fire 

Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain pines ; 

With singed top their stately growth, though bare, 

Stands on the blasted heath. 

Par. Lost, i. 611. 

Virgil thus compares the Cyclops to a grove : 

jEtnseos fratres, ccelo capita alta ferentes, 
Concilium horrendum : quales cum vertice celso 
Aeriae quercus, aut coniferas cyparissi 
Constiterant, sylva alta Jovis, lucusve Dianae. 



JEh. iii. 678. 



The monstrous race we spy 

A host of giants towering in the sky. 

So on some mountain towers the lofty grove 

Of beauteous Dian, or imperial Jove ; 

Th' aerial pines in pointed spires from far, 

Or spreading oaks majestic nod in air.* 



Pitt. 



Dryden, in his translation of these verses, becomes Ossianic in this line ; 
'• The misty clouds abont their foreheads fly." 



63 

Doctor Graham seems to think there is no imitation where there 
is no repetition both of thought and expression. But he should have 
recollected that imitators often wish to pass for originals, and that it 
is part of their art to embellish the thoughts which they borrow, and 
give them such new colouring and construction as will best serve for 
disguise. We do not suppose, with Doctor Graham, that Mr. Laing 
intended any burlesque on criticism, when he said that Macpherson 
imitated Tibullus as well as Milton, in the following passage: " Loveli- 
ness was around her as light, her steps were the music of songs." 
And again, "awe moved around her stately steps, like two stars were 
her radiant eyes. If on the heath she moved, her breast was whiter 
than the down of Cana ; if on the sea-beat shore, than the foam of 
the rolling ocean." 

Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, 

In every gesture dignity and love. Milton. 

Illam quidquid agit, quoque vestigia movet, 

Componit furtim, subsequiturque decor. 
Seu solvit crines, fusis decet esse capillis : 

Seu compsit, comtis est veneranda comis. 

Urit, seu Tyria voluit procedere palla, 

Urit, seu nivea Candida veste venit. 

Tib. lib. 4. 

i ' The lines of Tibullus," says Laing, " were certainly in Milton's 
contemplation. But his paraphrase is more literally transcribed by 
Macpherson." The similarity of the remaining part of the passage 
consists not in the imagery. We have neither the down of Cana, nor 
the foam of ocean in Tibullus, nor the Tyrian nor the snow-white robe 
in Ossian ; yet are we clearly of opinion, that the latter has imitated 
the former, and that the modern Scotch is indebted to the ancient 
Roman poet for the "peculiar construction" of his sentence. The 
dress is Ossianic, the figure Latian. 



64 

To convince such sceptics as Doctor Graham, we shall produce 
a few examples in which the marks of imitation are still more 
decisive : 

' Happy," said the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, " are thy men, 
and happy are these thy servants, which stand continually before thee, 
and hear thy wisdom."— 2 Chron. ix. 7. 

" Happy are thy people, O Fingal ; thou art the first in their 
danger, the wisest in the days of their peace." — Fingal, book v. 

Micaiah the prophet says to Ahab, " I saw all Israel scat- 
tered upon the hills, as sheep that have no shepherd." — 1 Kings, 
xxii. 17. 

Hidallan, in Comala, says, " the nations are scattered on the 
hills !" Here Macpherson stopped short. The introduction of the pas- 
toral simile did not suit the drama of a hunting age: besides, it would 
have too plainly discovered the source from which he drew. 

The prophet Isaiah asks, " who hath measured the waters in the 
hollow of his hand ?" and the spirit of Loda in Ossian echoes, " the 
blasts are in the hollow of my hand !" 

Sternholdand Hopkins, in their translation of the first Psalm, say 
of the wicked, that 

Like they are unto the chaff, 
Which wind drives to and fro. 

And Macpherson in Cathloda repeats, "his words are wind — wind, 
that to and fro drives the thistle.*' He could not say chaff, for that 
would indicate too improved a state of society for the age of his 
refined sentimental heroes. 

Eliphaz in Job says of the wicked, "by the blast of God they 
perish ; and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed." — Job. 
iv. 9. 



65 

The spirit of Loda re-echoes, " I look on the nations, and they 
vanish : my nostrils pour the blast of death." 

The first clause reminds us of Psalm civ. 32. " He looketh on 
the earth, and it trembleth." Here Macpherson seems ambitious of 
excelling the inspired writer. 

"The little hills/' says the Psalmist, "rejoice on every side." 
" The hills of Inistore rejoiced," replies Macpherson, in Carrick- 
Thura. 

Isaiah, in the spirit of prophecy, sings, " the heavens shall be 
rolled together as a scroll;" and Macpherson rechants, "when the 
skies were rolled together, then thy feast was spread." — Temora, 
book iii. 

" He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found," says 
Job, xx. 8-9. 

" We shall pass away like a dream : the hunter shall not know the 
place of our rest," reiterates Macpherson: and again, in the Songs of 
Selma, he repeats the thought, " my life flies away like a dream i 
why should I stay behind ?" 

" We are consumed by thine anger, and by thy wrath are we 
troubled," says the Psalmist, Ps. xc. 7- ; and Macpherson responds, 
" they were consumed in the flames of thy wrath." 

A multitude of similar passages might be quoted, in which we at 
once perceive not only the ideas, but the very words of Scripture ; 
and yet shall we be told they are not imitations ? Plagiarisms, indeed, 
would be a more fitting appellation. 

Macpherson appears to have been so familiar with the language 
of Scripture, that he frequently employs it, we should suppose, un- 
consciously ; or with a marvellous carelessness or intrepidity of detec- 
tion. Sometimes he conglomerates images and expressions from 
different passages ; and works them up into one description. The 

K 



66 

Song of Solomon, the Book of Isaiah, and the Psalms, have furnished 
him with many materials. But he does not confine himself to these. 
He levies contributions unsparingly from every part of the sacred 
volume, in which he can find any thing to suit his purpose. 

" Who is this," asks Solomon, " that cometh out of the wilderness 
like pillars of smoke? "Is that Cuthullin," resounds Macpherson, "or 
a pillar of smoke on the heath ?" Carthon is termed " a pillar of 
fre." Solomon invokes the north and the south winds : "awake, O 
north wind, and come thou south." And Macpherson has a similar 
invocation, " cease a little while, O wind ! stream, be thou silent 
awhile!" and again, "arise, winds of autumn, arise!" 

The following passages from Canticles, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, are 
frequently imitated. " Who is she that looketh forth as the morn- 
ing, fair as the moon, clear as the sun. — Song of Sol. vi. 10. His 
locks are bushy, (or curled,) v. 11., as the appearance of the bow that 
is in the cloud in the day of rain. — Ez. i. 28. Who is this that cometh 
from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah ? This that is glorious 
in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength ? — Is. lxiii. 1. 

" Who," asks Macpherson, " comes from the hill like a steed in his strength ? — Who 
comes like a stag of the desert, with all his herd behind him ? — Who comes towards my son 
with the murmur of a song ? — Who cometh from the hill like a cloud, tinged with the beam 
of the west? — Who," said the soft- voiced Carril, "who come like bounding roes? — Who 
comes from Lubar's vale ? — From the skirts of the morning mist ? — Was he white as the 
snow of Ardven — blooming as the bow of the shower? — Was his hair like the mist of the 
hill, soft and curling in the day of the sun? — Who is that before them like the terrible course 
of a stream ? — Who on his staff, is this ? — Who comes from the land of strangers, with his 
thousands around him ? * * * * Who is it but Comhal's son ? 

Though Macpherson sometimes makes a change in the imagery 
of the sacred writers, who does not see at a glance, that his descrip- 
tions, as they were suggested, are also compounded of phrases sup- 



67 

plied by their compositions. Even the remarkable death of Absalom 
has not escaped him, for he tells us, that " Clonar is pierced by 
Cathmor, nor yet lay the chief on earth : an oak seized his hair 
in his fall." — Temora, book viii. This Cathmor had his prototype 
in Homer's Axylus. — II. vi. 14. Who is described as 

TlavTag yap ^Aeeo-kev, oSy E7Ti oiKia vauov. 

A friend to human race. 
Fast by the road his ever open door, 
Obliged the wealthy and relieved the poor. 

Pope. 

But Macpherson was determined that his hero should exceed 
Homer's, and accordingly he assures us, that "seven paths led to his 
halls. Seven chiefs stood on the paths, and called the stranger to the 
feast! But Cathmor dwelt in the wood to shun the voice of praise!" — 
Temora, book i. 

What generous hospitality in a hunting age, when venison was 
the only food ! What delicate refinement of soul to withdraw from 
the loud huzzas of the people, or " the applause of listening senates/' 
was it? to dwell in the wood while his seven chiefs presided at the 
feast, and, from flowing shells, drank deep to the health of their mu- 
nificent, but, ah! too sensitive benefactor? But notwithstanding his 
extreme sensibility, he was a " high-bounding king, who hewed 
down the ridge of shields," and performed for Clonar the same office 
as Job performed for Absalom! " Clonar is pierced by Cathmor!" 
Justice, however, compels us to admit that this deed was prior to 
the seizure of the unhappy warrior's hair by the oak. 

Virgil describes Acestes as coming down from the top of a moun- 
tain, roughly clad in the skin of a Libyan bear : 

k 2 



68 

" Vertice montis ; 

* * * 

Horridus in jaculis, et pelle Libystidis ursse/ 



JEx. v. 35. 



And Macpherson informs us, that " Arindal descended from the 
hill, rough in the spoils of the chase." Would it not have been better 
to have rolled him in the folds of a bear-skin at once? Yes, but 
then the imitation had been too visible ; and though such a dress was 
suitable enough for one of Virgil's heroes, it was too barbarous for 
a hero of Ossian ! 

The imitations from Gray are equally striking : 

" Nor yet beside the rill, 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he." 

Macpherson reiterates, " nor by the rock, nor by the stream is 
he," preserving the very measure and cadence of the line : and again, 
" nor by that stream nor (by that) wood are they." 

Gray says at the beginning of one of his sublime odes : 

" Ruin seize thee ruthless king ! 
Confusion on thy banners wait !" 

And Comala exclaims, " confusion pursue thee over thy plains ; 
ruin overtake thee, thou king of the world I" 

Gray had written : 

" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

Macpherson, to emulate these lines, writes of " the flower of the 
rock that lifts its fair head unseen ; and strews its withered leaves in 
the blast." 



69 

Graham says, that " this image surpasses that of Catullus : 

" Flos in septis, secretis nascitur hortis" 

in point of appropriate elegance, but it may, perhaps, be allowed to 
be inferior to Gray's !" But he treats with scorn the idea that it is 
an imitation from Gray. For why ? an imitator would in this in- 
stance, probably, have chosen "Strews fragrance" instead of " Strews 
withered leaves!" 

Macpherson says to a star, " the waves come around thee with 
joy ; they bathe thy lovely hair !" 

But Homer had written before him of a star that was bathed in 

the ocean, XeXs/xsvog (oicsavoio, and Virgil of the morning star, per- 

fusus Lucifer unda. — JEn. viii. 589; a passage which Scaliger alleges 

to be sweeter than ambrosia. Profecto ne ambrosia quidefn dulcior 

est.— Poetices, Lib. v. p. 572. 

So bathed in ocean, with a vivid ray, 
Flames the refulgent star that leads the day. 

Pitt. 

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 

And yet anon repairs his drooping head, 

And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore, 

Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. 

Milton's Lycidas. 

j£neas thrice invokes the manes of Deiphobus, " magna manes 
ter voce vocavi" — JEn. vi. 506. And Macpherson makes his 
heroes say, " we thrice called the ghosts of our fathers." He ap- 
pears like the God in Virgil to have rejoiced in the number three ; 
" Nwnero Deus impare gaudet ;" — Eel. viii. 75, for he says, " Tren- 
more sighed thrice over the hero — thrice the winds of the night 
roared around — and Cairbar thrice stroked his beard !" 



70 

Doctor Graham is indignant at Mr. Laing for asserting that the 
comparison of Clessamor to a steed in his strength, is a literal and 
wretched transcript from Pope's translation of the same simile in 
Homer. We agree with Laing, and wonder how any one pretending 
to the name of critic, can for a moment question the justice of his 
assertion. He has also shewn perfectly to our satisfaction, and we 
should think of every impartial judge, that all the elements of the 
celebrated address to the sun, may be found in Paradise Lost, Sam- 
son Agonistes, Home's Douglas, Addison's Cato, Pope's Rape of the 
Lock, and the Sacred Scriptures ; and those of the description of 
Balclutha in Hosea, Lamentations and Zephaniah. The image of the 
fox looking out of the windows, is taken from the voice of the cor- 
morant and bittern singing in the windows, Zeph. ii. 14, combined 
with an image from Pope's Windsor Forest : 

" The Fox obscene to gaping tombs retires, 
And savage hovvlings fill the sacred choirs." 

No one was such a perfect master as Macpherson of the art of 
selecting images and poetical ideas from various sources, and of 
disguising and combining them in altered forms. He stole the co- 
lours which he deemed most beautiful from every pallet, and hoped 
by his dexterit}^ in compounding them, in spreading them on his 
poetical canvas, and wrapping his pictures in Caledonian mist, that 
they would be mistaken for originals, and that no eagle-eyed critic 
like Laing, would be able to detect the theft. Cacus dragged the 
bulls and cows of Hercules into his den by the tail, to prevent disco- 
very, ne qua forent pedibus vestigia rectis. But an unfortunate 
bellow betrayed the robber, and though he had the art to involve 
himself and his cavern in dense darkness, cceca caligine, he could not 
escape the vengeance of the exasperated hero : 



71 



Panditur extern plo foribus domus atra revulsis ; 
Abstractaeque boves, abjuratseque rapinse 
Coelo ostenduntur, 

Virg. J3n. viii. 262. 

The God then burst the gates ; and open lie 
The den's vast depths, all naked to the sky : 
Th' expanded caves dismiss th' imprison'd prey, 
From the black darksome dungeon to the day. 

Pitt. 



IMITATIONS FROM SCRIPTURE. 



Job, in one of his most sublime passages, says, " a spirit passed before my face," iv. 15.; 
and Macpherson introduces one of his ghosts in almost the same words : " a thin form passed 
before me." 



" Ye shall seek me and shall not find me." 

John, vii. 34. 
"The maids shall seek thee on the heath, but they shall not find thee." 

Macpherson. 



' That field was called the field of blood unto this day." 

Mat. xxvii. 8. 
" She (Grudar) mourned him in the field of blood." 

Fingal, book i. 



" Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills." 

Ps. 1. 10. 

" Comhal was the chief of a hundred hills ; 

His deer drank of a thousand streams !" 

Fingal, ii. 



72 

" The earth was without form, and void." 

Gen. i. 2. 

" His face is without form, and dark." 

War of Caros. 



" Who maketh the clouds his chariot." 

Ps. civ. 3. 

" Two dark clouds that are the chariots of ghosts." 

Fingal, book 3. 



" Then shall thy light break forth as the morning." 

Isaiah, lviii. 8. 

" Then shall my soul come forth like a light from the gates of the morn." 

Temora, book viii., note second. 



" The little hills rejoice on every side." 

Ps. lxv. 12. 

" The isles that are in the sea shall be troubled" 

Ez. xxvi. 18, 

" The little hills are troubled before him." 

Lathmon. 



" From the blood of the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned 

not back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty." 

2 Sam, i. 22. 

" His spear never returned unstained with blood ; nor his bow from the strife of the mighty." 

Death of Cuthullin. 



" When I went out to the gate through the city, when I prepared my seat in the street, 
the young men saw me, and hid themselves." 

Job, xxix. 7, 8. 



73 

" Dost thou not see, O Gaul ! how the steps of my age are honoured ? Morna moves 
forth, and the young men meet him with awe, and turn their eyes with silent joy on his 
course." 

Lathmon. 



: My doctrine shall drop as the rain, * * * and as the showers upon the grass." 

Deut. xxxii. 2. 

: My words are pleasant as the shower which falls on the sunny field." 

Fingal, book v. 



MISCELLANEOUS IMITATIONS. 

" Nisus ait : Dii ne hunc ardorem mentibus addunt 

Euryale ? an sua cuique Deus fit dira cupido ? 

Aut pugnam, aut aliquid jamdudum invadere magnum 

Mens agitat mihi ; nee placida contenta quiete est. 

Cernis, quae Rutulos habeat fiducia rerum : 

Lumina rara micant : somno vinoque soluti 

Procubuere : silent late loca." 

Virg. ix. 184. 

" Son of Fingal ! he said, why burns the soul of Gaul ? My heart beats high. My steps 
are disordered ; my hand trembles on my sword. When I look towards the foe my soul 
lightens before me. I see their sleeping host. Tremble thus the souls of the valiant in bat- 
tles of the spear ?" — Lathmon. 

The episode of Gaul and Ossian, in the Poem of Lathmon is copied from that of Nisus 
and Euryalus in Virgil, with such variations as the author supposed most likely to throw a 
column of mist over his plagiarisms. The Trojan heroes slay their foes sleeping, but the 
more generous Gael, disdaining to steal a victory, strike their bossy shields in the camp of 
their enemies, that they may be slaughtered awake. Anxious to see how the Latin transla- 
tion of this poem would appear beside the strains of the Mantuan bard, we suffered great 
disappointment on finding that it is not inserted in Sir John Sinclair's volumes. Why this 
omission ? 



74 

" Use tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere morem, 

Parcere subjeclis, et debellare superbos." Virg. 

" O Oscar, bend the strong in arm, but spare the feeble hand." 

Fingal, book iii. 
" Ossian be thou a storm in war, but mild when the foe is low." 

Calthon and Conmal. 



" Smooth-sliding without step." 

Milton. 

1 Its large limbs did not move in steps." 

Carthon. 



" Penthesilea furens, mediisque in millibus ardet." 
" Fierce Cairbar roared in the midst of thousands." 



Virg. 
Macphekson. 



" Like a broad shield amid the watry waste." 

Pope's Odyssey. 

' On the third day arose Tromathon, like a blue shield in the midst of the sea." 

Oithona. 



"Skirted his loins and thighs with downy gold." 

Milton. 

" A sun-beam was on his skirts ; they glittered like the gold of the stranger." 

Macpherson. 



part huge of bulk 
" Wallowing unwieldy, enormous in their gait 
Tempest the ocean." Par. Lost, book vii. 410. 

The waves sport unwieldy round with all their backs of foam." 

Temora, book viii. 



" Windy Troy." " Windy Temora." 

Hom. Macpherson. 



15 

" Where were ye, nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep, 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie, &c." 

Milton's Lycidas. 

Imitated from Virgil, Ecl. x. 9, and Theocritus, Idyl. i. 66. 

" Where have ye been, ye southern winds ! when the sons of my love were deceived ? 

But ye have been sporting on the plain, pursuing the thistle's beard/' 

Darthula. 



A multitude of imitations might be added to these, but we are unwilling to exhaust the 
patience of the reader. 



SECTION IV. 

Of the Argument founded on the Excellence of the Poetry. 

The supposed excellence of Macpherson's poems, is with some 
a good argument in favour of their authenticity : 

" To suppose," says Blair, " that two or three hundred years ago, when we well know 
the Highlands to have been in a state of gross ignorance and barbarity, there should have 
arisen in that country a poet of such exquisite genius, and of such deep knowledge of man- 
kind and of history, as to divest himself of the ideas and manners of his own age, and to 
give us a just and natural picture of a state of society ancienter by a thousand years; one 
who could support this counterfeited antiquity, through such a large collection of poems, 
without the least inconsistency ; and who, possessed of all this genius and art, had at the 
same time the self-denial of concealing himself, and of ascribing his own work to an anti- 
quated bard, without the imposture being detected, is a supposition that transcends all 
bounds of credibility." 

l2 



76 

Graham follows Blair, and says : 

"If it be ascertained that these poems were composed by a contemporary, imbued as Mr. 
Macpherson certainly was, in a very respectable measure, with the literature of Greece and 
Rome, as well as of modern times, we are presented with a phenomenon still more inexpli- 
cable. That such a person should have produced a body of poetry, which has been justly 
considered as possessing so high a merit, ' as to have given a new tone to poetry throughout 
Europe ;'* but at the same time devoid of all modern allusion, and formed neither in its ima- 
gery or expression on the model of those ancient authors, who have communicated their pecu- 
liar colouring so generally, to all modern compositions, appears to be a circumstance still 
more strange, than the supposition of the high antiquity which has been ascribed to it."f 

Sir John Sinclair re-echoes the same sentiments. He has laboured 
to prove — 

" 1st, That the poems of Ossian are authentic ancient poetry ; and 2nd, That in a remote 
period of our history, the mountains of Scotland produced a bard whose works must ren- 
der his name immortal, and whose genius has not been surpassed by the efforts of any 
modern or even ancient competitor." 

Elsewhere we find these poems extolled as equal or superior to Homer 
and Virgil, or if in any respect they are inferior to those of the father 
of poetry, their tasteful defender can account for their inferiority ! 
But notwithstanding the extravagant eulogies of Blair, Graham, 
the Edinburgh Reviewers, and Sir John Sinclair ; Homer, nay even 
Virgil, still holds a distinguished pre-eminence over Macpherson. 
Had the poems of the latter been left to rest on their own intrinsic 
merit, they would long since have sunk into oblivion. They derived 
whatever interest they possessed from their supposed antiquity ; and 
Hume, as has been already noticed, stated truly to Blair, that not- 
withstanding all the varnish with which he covered them, they would 
fall into discredit, unless their authenticity were proved. Accord- 

• 

* Edinburgh .Review, No. XII. Art. 7. f Graham's Introduction, pp. vii, viii. 



77 

ingly they have been gradually declining in public estimation, and 
are regarded now only as a curious imposition, deriving an adventi- 
tious interest from the literary controversies to which they have 
given birth. 

The question recurs, if they were not original, is it to be supposed 
that Macpherson could compose them ? Why not ? Why should not 
Macpherson have as much genius as the son of Fin Mac-Cumhal ? 
He had certainly infinitely more literary advantages. The stores of 
Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, and English poetry, were open to him, 
and from all of them he drew as liberally as if they were his own exclu- 
sive property. Every page of his poems bears evidence of his industry 
in collecting and disposing his borrowed materials. He has recast and 
disguised them, to be sure, and intermingled them with some foreign 
ingredients. Instead of the rude Cyclopean architecture of the an- 
cient Celts, he has presented us with a new composite order of his 
own construction, which deserves to be named the Macphersonian. 
His poems have the same relation to Homer and Virgil, that a High- 
land shieling has to the Parthenon or Colosseum. 

By a curious kind of fatality, the defenders of the authenticity of 
Ossian, almost always furnish arguments for their own confutation. 
Thus, after stating the impossibility of any genius of modern times 
equalling the old Celtic bard, they tell us that the Ossianic poetical 
temperament still prevails in the Highlands to such a degree, that 
we should not be surprised to hear of a whole clan of Ossian s. 

" Even in the Highlanders of the present day, whose characters," says Graham, " have 
not undergone a change by the contact of foreign manners, we may still trace the mode of 
thinking and acting which distinguishes the personages of Ossian. Accustomed to traverse 
vast tracts of country, which have never been subjected to the hand of art; contemplating 
every day the most diversified scenery; surrounded every where by wild and magnificent 
objects ; by mountains, and lakes, and forests, the mind of the Highlander is expanded, 
and partakes in some measure of the rude sublimity of the objects with which he is conver- 



78 

sant. Pursuing the chase in regions not peopled according to their extent, he often finds him- 
self alone in the gloomy desert, or by the margin of the dark frowning deep ; his imagination 
tinged with pleasing melancholy, finds society in the passing breeze, and he beholds the 
airy forms of his fathers descending on the skirts of the cloud. When the tempest howls 
over the heath, and the elements are mixed in dire uproar, he recognizes the angry spirit of 
the storm, and he retires to his secret cave. Such is at this day, the tone of mind which cha- 
racterises the Highlander, who has not lost the distinctive marks of his race by commerce 
with strangers j and such too is the picture which has been drawn by Ossian."* 

After this, who shall venture to contend against the possibility of 
the Highlands, even in modern times, producing some genius of equal 
or superior lustre to all its former luminaries ? 

Among the notices of the principal Gaelic books, published dur- 
ing the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, p. 562, vol. hi. of Sir John 
Sinclair's edition of Ossian, is the following : 

• " A Collection of Poems by Duncan Mac-Intyre of Glenurchy, Argyllshire 1 768, 8vo. 
Mac-Intyre, though an illiterate man, holds place among the first of modem Bards; his 
poem on the summer is beautiful and energetic, equal to any thing in Thomson's Seasons ; 
his panegyric on Beindouran, (a hill above Glenurchy,) excels every thing of this kind ; his 
Mam-Lorn, or Coire cheathaich, and Coire gorm au fhasaich, are admired by every Celtic 
scholar, who takes pleasure to see nature painted in the liveliest colours." 

This notice forcibly corroborates the presumption of the editor of 
the Ogygia Vindicated, that " no man will deny that a Highland 
bard of the last or present century, may not possess as much poetical 
fire as the son of Fingal, or any other illiterate bard in Fingal's 
army;"-f especially, it might be added, if his natural fire was height- 
ened, and his taste improved like Macpherson's, by close familiarity 
with the Scriptures, and the English, Greek, and Roman classics. 

Some Irish poets of modern times might contest the palm with 
the most celebrated poets of antiquity. Mr. O'Reilly informs us of 

* Graham's Essay, pp. 28, 29. + Editor's Preface, p. 15. 



79 

Denis M'Namara, a school-master of the county of Waterford, 1755, 
" who wrote a mock ^Eneid in Irish, in which there are some lines 
by no means inferior to any of Virgil's. The shout of Charon, as 
described by the Irish bard, is, perhaps, superior to the Cyclops' roar 
of the Mantuan poet." Again he speaks of M'AulifFe, a blacksmith, 
near Glanmire, county of Corke, author of some poems, in which "he 
describes the river Funshan in a storm, where his " ~£)l)&n ^Otac 
jttjTDjfi xt £,c<l)i)Om tltf "DZOT) " is not inferior to Homer's descrip- 
tion of the rolling waves, in the 4th book of the Iliad." 

Blair, endeavouring to support the authenticity of the poems by 
internal evidence, says, "they have all the characters of antiquity im- 
pressed upon them ;" he should have subjoined, recast in a modern 
mould, and with new characters impressed upon them, which anti- 
quity would disown. " The heroes," says he, " prepare their own 
repasts." — Yes, this is hinted at, but Macpherson dared not venture, 
as the father of poets has done, minutely to describe the process of 
cutting the throat, of flaying, of separating the joints, and fixing 
them on spits. He was afraid to come down from his bombast, or 
depart from his generalities, to give us a true picture of the manners 
of his adopted age. We can learn nothing from him unless it be in 
a note, in what mode the repast was prepared, though we learn it 
distinctly from other sources. A common culinary operation was 
beneath the dignity of Macpherson, and perhaps above his powers, 
without his degenerating into meanness. We think some of those 
damsels whom he dresses so frequently in mail, would have been as 
well, as naturally, and as agreeably to the manners of the age, em- 
ployed in hospitable cares at home, as in wandering to secret caves, 
and indulging a whining sentimentality with blue-eyed heroes. 

Again, says Blair, " no foreign ornaments are hunted after;" and 
hence an argument in favour of the antiquity of the poems. But 



80 

more weight has been laid on it, than it will sustain. Certainly, we are 
warranted in affirming, that no poet can employ ornaments or images 
to which he is a total stranger. He who never saw or heard of a 
lion, could never think of comparing a hero to that formidable animal. 
But nothing is more common than to borrow imagery and description 
from foreign sources. Their novelty recommends them, and why not 
adopt them, as we adopt historical and geographical facts, from the 
authority of others ? Homer never saw a Chimsera, nor the monsters 
that barked around Scylla. But he had heard of them, and placed 
them among his miracula speciosa. On the supposition that Mac- 
pherson's Ossian did write the poems ascribed to him, he might have 
employed Roman imagery, and allusions to Roman history, customs, 
encampments, marches, battles, not only with manifest propriety, 
but with great advantage to his credibility. For the heroes whose 
exploits he sings, and in whose renown he shared, overcame the king 
of the world, and took spoil from the strangers ! Why does he not 
dwell on these facts, and tell us the names of some of the Roman 
captives, for the Celtic heroes were too generous to put all their pri- 
soners to the sword ? Were they also too generous to wear their 
arms, to erect trophies of their spears and shields, or to breathe in 
their songs of triumph a hint of the dismay which would pervade "the 
eternal city," on hearing of the overthrow of her legions by the victo- 
rious arms of the Gael ? If "no foreign ornaments are sought after," 
how did " showers of blood — and gates of brass, (See Lathmon, vol. i. 
p. 273,) — thunders in the bosom of the ground, and earthquakes that 
shake the green-vallied Erin from sea to sea," find their way into the 
compositions of the Celtic poet ? Whence the Christian benedictions 
which he sometimes puts into the mouth of his heroes ? Whence " the 
spirit of heaven" and " the vapours of death" — with the apples of 
gold, the sparkling wine, and the gem-studded cups, that gladdened 
the kings of the world ? 



81 

"In the battles," says our critic, " it is evident that drums, trumpets, and bagpipes were 
not known nor used." 

No, Macpherson's fear of committing an anachronism of this 
kind, though he has not scrupled to commit others far more flagrant, 
induced him sometimes to use too much caution. He knew well 
that the introduction of a band of music would be as bad as the 
Trojan hero's quotation from Aristotle, in Shakspeare. The art of 
criticism was better understood in his days than in those of our great 
dramatist. Yet, perhaps, he might have introduced the bagpipe 
without hazard of censure. It would have been characteristic ; but 
from an excess of prudence, or deeming the bagpipe's notes barba- 
rous, and little accordant with the refined taste of his heroes 
and heroines, he declined the use of an instrument capable of stir- 
ring the most heart-thrilling emotions in the breast of a modern 
Highlander. From the writings of great poets we can gather much 
information relative to the state of the arts, sciences, and peculiar cus- 
toms of the age which they describe, or in which they wrote. But what 
do we learn from Macpherson's Ossian ? — literally nothing. When 
Homer describes a funeral, he gives a faithful picture of the rites and 
ceremonies employed on the occasion. In Ossian's burials there is 
not a single circumstance peculiar or characteristic, if we except the 
song of the bards, and the placing the horn of a deer or a sword by 
the side of the entombed. This defect in the real Ossian would be 
unaccountable or inexcusable, for we elsewhere learn that heroes 
were interred " standing in arms, face to face, with their weapons 
ready,"* a peculiarity susceptible of pathetic description, and which 
the genuine bard would not omit. But the omission by Macpherson 
is capable of easy explanation. Indeed the absence of ancient Celtic 



* See Antiquarian Researches, by Sir William Betham, p. 356 



M 



82 

ideas and images is tenfold more striking and conclusive against the 
authenticity of the poems, than the absence of modern ornaments 
would be favourable to its establishment. It demonstrates that the 
author did not write in the age nor in the scenes with which he pre- 
tends to be familiar. He speaks of the sun and moon, of seas, rivers, 
and lakes, of mountains and valleys, and gives us a superabundance 
of rainbows and poetic mists. But where are the badgers and the 
otters of the Fenian Tales ; and the bears and the wolves ? Of these 
there were numbers in the Highlands, and also squirrels, (as we are 
informed in Sir John Sinclair's third volume, p. 523,) though now 
nearly extinct, near Cona, the Fingallian river. " The country being 
at that time overrun with woods, afforded shelter to wolves and bears, 
enemies to the human race, and they had no other place of safety for 
their residence, but either in their caves or upon the tops of the 
hills," (Id. p. 539.) Those ferocious bears of Caledonia, and the 
wild bulls with thick manes, of which Martial and Plutarch speak, 
(Camden, Scotland, p. 31,) would have supplied some poetic pic- 
tures, and suggested themes of heroic enterprize. There is indeed 
one lachrymose reference to a bull in the first book of Fingal. "But, 
ah ! why ever lowed the bull on Golbun's echoing heath. They saw 
him leaping like snow ;" and again, in the second book, we are told 
of a division of " the herd on the hill." But we read of none of 
those grand forays, which, in succeeding ages, became so common 
that no Highland chieftain could say of his neighbours, what Achil- 
les says of the Trojans : 

Ou yap TronroT ejuac fiovg r\\aaav, ovde juev linrovq. 

II. «. 1. 154. 

Such exploits would have been unworthy of the civilization and re- 
finement of Ossian's heroes, though it seems they never planted a grain 



83 

of corn, nor would they have known the strange exotic had it been 
presented to their view ! Herds of goats and cows seeking shelter, are 
placed by Blair among the images which " betray a later period of 
of society," as if ever there was an age in which goats and kine were 
not gregarious, or inclined to seek shelter ! The same critic ranks 
" windows clapping" first in the list of those modern images, forget- 
ful, no doubt, that he has quoted with high approbation, and as a 
specimen of the real antique, a passage in which "the fox looked out 
from the windows." Now, if windows afforded a looking-place to the 
fox, why might they not also clap, without losing their claims to 
antiquity ? 

Pennant, in his Tour to Scotland, note, vol. i. pp. 216,217, says: 

"It is to me a matter of surprise, that no mention is made in the poems of Ossian, of 
our great beasts of prey which must have abounded in his days, for the wolf was a pest to the 
country so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the bear existed there till the year 1057, 
when a Gordon, for killing a fierce bear, was directed by King Malcolm III, to carry three 
bears' heads in his banner. — Hist. Gordons, i. p. 2. Other native animals are often mentioned 
in several parts of the work ; and in the five little poems on night, the compositions of as 
many bards, every modern British beast of chase is enumerated ; the howling dog and howl- 
ing fox described, yet the howling wolf omitted, which would have made the bards' night 
much more hideous.'' 

But what we want in wolves and bears is amply supplied by dark 
brown deer, and dogs, " the long-bounding sons of the chace. — •A 
thousand dogs fly off at once, gray-bounding through the heath. A 
deer fell by every dog; three by the white-breasted Bran!" Fingal vi. 
This was a glorious chace, to which the hunting of " Percy of Nor- 
thumberland in the Scottish woods," was a mere bagatelle. A thou- 
sand and three deer in one hunt ! What Asiatic prince ever equalled 
this? Even Nimrod must, own himself surpassed, and the country 
must have been covered with deer, as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. 

m 2 



84 

But Macpherson, it seems, falls short of his Gaelic original, which 
lets loose three thousand dogs, and each dog kills a brace of deer; and 
Bran, though but a whelp, killed one more than any of them ; so that 
six thousand and one deer must have fallen ! 

Leig sinn ar tri mile cu 

Bu mhor lugh is bu gharg. 

Is mharbh gach cu dhiubh da f hiadh. 

We let loose our three thousand hounds, 
That excelled in fleetness as in fierceness, 
And each hound killed two deer. 

Rep. High. Soc. p. 258. 

Well might Doctor O'Conor exclaim : 

" Faustam quidem dies ! ^Eneas esuriens sept em tan turn cervos in Libya occidit, miser ! 
Si sorte ei evenisset Scotiam adire !" 

The pretended original Gaelic of the foregoing passage, as pub- 
lished in Sir John Sinclair's volumes, differs very considerably from 
the Highland Society's version, being translated with more fidelity 
from the English Ossian : 

Chaidh mile cu air falbh san f hraoch 
Thuit fiadh air a thaobh ro' gach cu. 

Thus rendered by the Latin translator : 

Canes mille exsoluti sunt in erica 
Eversusque est cemis in latus a singulo cane. 

We observe a similar difference in the description of Fingal's 
standard in the two versions of the Highland Society and Sir John 



85 



Sinclair. The former has more the appearance of an original, being 
brief and simple compared with the latter, which is amplified, and 
translated verbatim from Macpherson's English. 



Highland Society's ancient Gaelic. 

Thog sinn Deo.greine re crann 
Bratach Fhinn 's bu gharbh a greas 
Lomlan do cblachaibh ann or, 
'S ann linn fein bu mbor a meas. 



Translation by Doctor Donald Smith. 

We reared the sun-beam to its staff, 
The standard of Fingal of furious sweep, 
Full-studded with stones in gold ; 
With us it was held in high respect. 

High. Soc. Report, p. 249. 

Macfarlan's Latin Translation. 

Ereximus nos jubar solis in arboreo hastili 
Vexillum magnum regis gladiorum ; 
Fuit laetitia in animo cujusque principis 
Quando elevata est ejus ala ad ventum. 
Fuit ejus (vexilli) caerulum latus bullatum 

auro 
Instar conchse canae magnae noctis, 
Quando despiciunt stellae e ccelo. 

Sir John Sinclair's Ossian, 
vol. ii. pp. 170-171. 

We were rather startled on finding the Roman architectural idea 
of the shell of the azure vault of the sky, concha ccerula in the 
Celtic bard ; the concha being a species of fornix or camerated roof, 
" which, like a trumpet, grows wider as it lengthens." The testudo, 
or tortoise shell, also gave a name to the arched dome of temples : 
thus, Dido sat media testudine templi. The idea was transferred to 
the arched vault of heaven, and hence Macpherson's " blue wide 
shell of the nightly sky," translated into Gaelic, " shlighe ghlais 
mhoir na h-oidhch /"* But we might have reserved our admiration 



Macpherson's Gaelic. 

Thog sinn Deo-greine ri crann 
A bhratach mhor aig righ nan lann 
Bha solas an anam gach triath 
'Nuair thog i a sgiath ri gaoith. 
Bha 'gorm-shlios ballach le h-or 
Mar shlighe ghlais mhoir na h-oidhch' 
'Nuair sheallas na reil' o n' speur. 



* Laing has observed, " as each language has certain metaphorical idioms, easily distin- 
guished when transferred to another ; a chest applied to the human trunk or chest, or a trunk 



86 



for the royal palace which the Highland Society has presented to us 
in the verses of some Ossianic school-master, " versibus a quodam 
Ludimagistro compositis" as Doctor O'Conor remarks. He further 
observes, that if Fingal, when he slew the six thousand and one deer, 
had not the good fortune of iEneas, to see the citadel of Carthage, 
with its rising walls, and the temple of Juno, of which "on brazen 
steps the marbled threshold rose," he beheld a royal palace of supe- 
rior magnificence, indicative of all the wealth of Pygmalion. 



Fosgailear an grianan corr 
Bha ar a thugha le cloimh ian, 
Bha comlaichean ris do'n or bhuidh 
Agfus ursanan fo fhiundrain. 



The chamber so highly prized is opened, 
It was covered above with the down of birds, 
Its doors were yellow with gold, 
And the side posts were of polished bone. 

Rep. High. Soc. pp. 236, 237. 



Doctor O'Conor's translation follows : 

" Aperitur Regia magnifica 

Cujus laqueare coopertum plumis avium ! 

Portae ejus aurofulvo caelatae 

Et postes ex ossibus limatis ! 



inversely to a chest, is peculiar to the English ; the wing of a house or of an army, is adopted 
from the Latin ; the wings of the morning and of the winds, from Scripture. But that 
Ossian anticipating the English idiom (term,) should employ cliadh a basket, literally the 
same with cista, for the human chest, will be believed only by those who are already per- 
suaded that the rustling wing of the blast preceded the translation of the Psalms into Earse." 
Doctor Graham flatly contradicts Mr. Laing, and says, that cliadh is neither literally nor 
metaphorically the same with Cista. Who shall decide ? our Latin dictionaries render cista 
a chest, a basket, a maund, (i. e. a great basket,) a pannier; and our Irish render cliadh a bas- 
ket, a cage, the trunk of a man or beast. There is evidently then some similarity between the 
terms ; the last meaning of the Irish word is clearly metaphorical, but whether its application 
in this sense be borrowed or original, we shall not affirm. But we feel pretty con fident that 
" shlighe ghlais mhoir na h-oidhch," is a novel idea in the Gaelic language. The only idea we 
apprehend, which it would convey to a hero of the times of old, would be that of one of the 
conchs employed at the nightly feast of shells. 



87 

What pity the author did not say elephant or ivory in place of 
bone ! It would have been as easy for him to bring that precious 
spoil from Hindostan or Ceylon, as to cross the Atlantic to the grand 
temple of Mexico, or the palace of Montezuma, for the plumage of 
birds* to adorn the royal palace of tufted Morven ! 

Blair places the absence of religious ideas among the proofs of 
Ossian's authenticity ; but if he had said of forgery, he would have 
approached nearer the truth. There has never been any state of 
society in which poetry was cultivated, from which religious ideas 
were excluded. The first and most sublime efforts of the muses in 
every country, and in every age, are devotional. Urania takes the 
precedence of all the Nine. Hesiod and Homer are full of religion, to 
say nothing of the hymns attributed to Orpheus. The Fenian 
tales also have numerous religious ideas, and a passage in the poem 
of the Chase would do no dishonour to the most distinguished Chris- 
tian poet. Saint Patrick chides Oisin for comparing Fionn with the 
God of the Christians. 

" Cease, cease thy strain, nor longer dare 
Thy Fionn, chief of chiefs, compare 
With him who reigns enthroned in light, 
The King of kings, of matchless might. 
'Tis he who framed the heaven and earth ; 

'Tis he who nerves the hero's hand ; 
'Tis he who calls fair flowers to birth, 

And bids each blooming branch expand. 
He gives the fishy streams to run, 
And lights the moon and radiant sun. 

It did not suit Macpherson's plan to admit any thing like this. 
He has guarded as carefully as he could against the introduction of 

* See De Solis. 



88 

Christian sentiments ; but, as Shaw long since observed, has not 
always succeeded, for in Temora we find the Christian expressions, 
"peace to thy soul" — "blest be thy soul." He could not, however, 
well dispense with all machinery, and accordingly availed himself of 
the "popular superstition of the Highlands respecting ghosts, second 
sight, and the eternal agencies of the devil, whom he transforms into 
the spirit of Loda," invests with omnipotence, and describes as hav- 
ing the blasts " in the hollow of his hand !" 

Enchantment and magic act a distinguished part in the early 
History of Ireland. They are employed in the Fenian Tales, and had 
probably great influence among all the Celtic tribes. Why has Mac- 
pherson rejected their aid ? He might have used them in Temora at 
least, the scene of which lies in Erin, with propriety and success. He 
had antiquity on his side, in the History of the Tuatha De Danans, 
and a sanction for their poetical agency in the examples of Theocri- 
tus, Virgil, and Lucan. But he wished to avoid collision with the 
Fenian Tales, and was contented with ghosts, which he deemed more 
exclusively his own. These he could manage as he pleased. They 
came and departed at his beck, shrieking, roaring, and " riding on 
the wings of the wind !" 

When he speaks so frequently of the halls of Selma, of the four 
grey stones of renown, and of the narrow house, it seems strange that 
he has omitted all mention of vitrified towers. These would have 
furnished almost as fine a theme to the poet as the Druidical fires of 
Beltein and Samhuin. " The remains of several of these towers, says 
Smith, in his Dissertation, p. 114, still to be seen in the Highlands, 
seem to prove that the inhabitants of those countries enjoyed even the 
comforts of life in a period more remote than the age of Fingal, or 
the invasion of the Romans, as no such mode of architecture has been 
since practised." 



89 

He also carefully avoids all allusion to the Ogham inscriptions, 
still to be found upon rocks, and to the military game of chess, in 
which the Fenian warriors delighted, and of which particular mention 
is made in the old Irish tale of the three sons of Usnach, a tale well 
known to Macpherson. He probably thought the game of too mo- 
dern invention for the age of his poems, though had he been as fami- 
liar with the Odyssey as with the Iliad, he might have found that its 
introduction would expose him to no hazard of an anachronism. 

Blair mentions it as a merit, that he particularizes his mountains, 
seas, and lakes, though noticed only in a simile; "it is the hill of 
Cromla, the storm of the sea of Malmor, or the reeds of the lake of 
Lego/' On this Shaw justly observes, " the author surely would not 
be so uncircumspect as to use the name of Parnassus, Scylla, and 
Charybdis, or the reeds of the Red Sea. This is no more than what 
every poet, and in every country, has done ; and this internal evi- 
dence proves nothing." 

Lord Karnes was a strenuous defender of the authenticity of 
Ossian, and being a critic of taste, he quotes a great variety of pas- 
sages as illustrative of the manners. " If all," says he, " were not 
genuine, the cloven foot would some where peep out."* And so it 
does, and the horns and the tail too, till the whole father of lies be- 
comes apparent, though thickly clad in Caledonian mist. Some of 
the very passages quoted by his Lordship, belong to the sacred Scrip- 
tures, and rise conspicuous, in characters of light, to proclaim whence 
they were stolen. Blair says well, that Macpherson does not borrow. 
No, he clandestinely and surreptitiously takes "jewels of silver, and 
jewels .of gold and raiment," and spoils his neighbours, and offers the 
spoil to an old Irish bard,, with whose fame he wishes to identify his 
own, but who indignantly scorns the alliance and the offering. 

* Karnes' Sketches, vol. i. p. 245. . 

N 



90 

" By many/' says Shaw, "it hath been said that the similes of Ossian 
are taken from so remote a period of society, as to be a strong proof 
of the antiquity of the poem. I grant the similes in general are from 
nature. And why ? Because the country described as the scene of 
action at this day, and its inhabitants, are in some degree but emerg- 
ing from a state of nature. * * * * Any Englishman may go 
down, and see those phenomena in the elements and face of the coun- 
try : of which he may lay up a number, and write when he comes 
home, poetry of the same nature. This indeed has already been 
done at home, without the trouble of travelling."* 

True, we need not travel to the Highlands to find similes from 
nature, nor was it necessary for Macpherson to put himself to the 
trouble and expense of such a journey for such a purpose, since he 
had similes enough ready prepared in his library, some of which he 
might long have sought for in vain, either in echoing Morven, or in 
"the green vallied Erin, when it shakes its mountains from sea to 
sea." Happily, cold-hearted critics like ourselves, may say, nature 
does not now indulge the bards of Erin with earthquakes, to supply 
them with similes and poetic imagery ! 

Considering the paucity of Macpherson's ideas and original 
images, it is truly astonishing how his poems ever acquired any 

* Shaw formed a true estimate of Macpherson's poetry, when he wrote the following 
passage : " I remember when I travelled that country (the Highlands) three years ago, to 
have sat down on a hill, and the scene being favourable, in a poetic mood, I jingled together 
upon paper, with suitable invented Gaelic names, the epithets of blue-eyed, meek-eyed, 
mildly-looking, white-bosomed, dark-brown locks, noble, generous, valiant, tears, spears, darts, 
hearts, harts, quivers, bows, arrows, helmets, steel, streams, torrents, noble deeds, other times, 
bards, chiefs, storms, songs, &c, and produced a little poem which reads pretty smoothly ; 
and if I had a mind to publish it, it would be no difficult matter to persuade some people 
that I had translated it from the Gaelic ; for I might translate a stanza of it into Earse, shew 
it to the inquisitive, and say I had the rest by me, after which they would never inquire." 

Shaw's Inquiry, pp. 58, 59. 



91 

degree of popularity. He repeats the same image a thousand times, 
and presents it in every variety of attitude, and in every hue of the 
prism. The sun, the moon, the stars, meteors, clouds, vapours and 
mists, wind, light and darkness, grey stones and mossy towers, 
spears, helmets, and shields, are all confounded together in every 
page. His poetry resembles the kaleidoscope, an optical toy, which, 
on every turn presents a new combination of pieces of broken glass, 
exhibiting, through a lens, a curious variety of shapes and colours, 
but bearing no similitude to any thing in nature. The mind is at 
first dazzled and amused with this new species of poetical mosaic, 
but soon becomes satiated with its constant sameness and inutility. 
We read whole pages, nay whole poems, and when we have done 
cannot tell what we have been reading about. We seem to be wrapt 
in that eternal mist, which must have been the source of Macpher- 
son's inspiration, the element in which he breathed, and of which his 
poetical world is composed. 

As the same images and epithets are repeated with a frequency 
which few would readily credit who have not particularly attended to 
the subject, it will be necessary to illustrate our position by a few 
examples. 

To begin with his favourite mist : 

" Like the mist of Lano — his robe of mist flew on the wind — like grey and watery 
mists — stars, each looking faintly through her mist — his friends sit around the king on mist — 
they are rolled together like mist — Ossian sees the mist that shall receive his ghost — he be- 
holds the mist that shall form his robe — I see them sitting on mist — mist settles on their four 
dark hills — ocean's mist — pillars of mist — columns of mist — day of mist — locks of mist — boars 
of mist — folds of mist — isle of mist — .steeds like wreaths of mist* 

*■ Macpherson should be called the poet of mist, for no one has known its use better, or 
employed it more frequently than he. But lest we should not see and appreciate the tasteful 

N 2 



92 

To folds he is almost as partial as to mist. Thus we read of the 

" Moon swimming through its (the vapour's) folds— folded cloud— folded in a storm— 
folded in his thoughts—; folded in mist-; folds of darkness— folds of battle—; folds of war." 

Deeming darkness an ingredient in the sublime, he is never wea- 
ried with introducing it ; hence he gives us : 

" Dark streams— rfar/fc-skirted night — dark-eyed kings — dark-red cloud of Loda — dark- 
rolling years — dark course of streams — dark oak — dark-robed moon— dark wing — dar k- rolling 
deep — dark-brown years — </ar£-bosomed ships — dark-brown side — thy thoughts are dark — 
the death that was dark in his soul — dark as the swelling wave of ocean— in the cave he 
placed me dark — dark rolls the river — who art thou in the darkness — the blast of darkness — 
the midst of darkness — no darkness travelled over his brows — darkness covered their beauty — 
thou hast left us in darkness — then the hero sits in darkness — I stood in the darkness of my 
strength — darkness gathers on his brows — the darkness of his face — he crept in darkness — he 
passed on in darkness — darkness shall roll on my side — spirits may descend in darkness — he- 
fled to his ships in darkness — a darkness has met him— silence darkened eveiy face — she shrunk 
darkened from Fingal — thou art darkened in thy youth — darkened moons — sadness darkened in 
his hall — the shield half-covered with clouds is like the darkened moon — nor darkened the king 
alone — wrath darkened in his soul — darkening years — darkening joy — the storms are darkening 
—the darkening chiefs — what darkens in Connal's soul — the soul of Ossian darkly rose." 

To compensate for so much darkness, we have an equal quantity 
of light, brightening, glittering, and gleaming : 

" The light of heaven was in the bosom of Cathmor." Quaere, is this a Celtic idea ? 
Gladness rose a light on her face — the light of steel — a stream of light — her eyes were like 

manner in which he has employed it, he obligingly informs us, in a note to the eighth 
book of Temora. " Not all the strength of Homer," he says, " could sustain with dig- 
nity the minutiee of a single combat." Therefore, he with more judgment than Homer, 
throws a column of mist over the combat of Fingal and Cathmor ; and says, " it were 
well for some poets to have sometimes thrown mist over their single combats." The idea 
is manifestly taken from the well-known story of the painting of the sacrifice of Iphigenia 
by Timanthes. The painter having exhausted his power of depicting grief on the attendants, 
judiciously threw a column of mist, we mean a veil, over the face of Agamemnon, and left 
the sorrows that overwhelmed the parent to be imagined by the spectator. 

How did the old Celtic bard become acquainted with the painter of Sicyon ? 



93 

stars of light — the light of my soul shall arise — to-morrow I move in light — in light I met the 
foe— deeds are streams of light — the light of song — the streak of light — light of beauty — 
light of armour — the spirits of the dead lightened along his soul — he lightened forward in 
battle." 

"Bright from his parted west — bright in her locks — bright-tumbling stream — faces 
bright with joy — sword &n^/t/-streaming — the chief who travelled in brightness — their faces 
brightened round with joy — joy brightens the face of the host — like the flame of the sun 
when it is bright — gladness brightened in the hall — brightened with song — brightened looks — 
the brightening king — Lanul shall brighten at her streams." 

Epithets and verbs compounded of half are innumerable : 

"Ha(/"-unsheathed, (repeatedly )— half-kindled — /^(/"-enclosed — half-\ iewless— half finish- 
ed — half- formed — Aa(/*-descended — half-fallen— /^(/"-extinguished meteor — /^(/"-extinguished 
fire — half-consumed — half-enraged — W/-hid — half-bent — half-worn — half-formed of the 
shadowy smoke — /ia(/-enlightened— /^(/"-distinguished — half-heard— half-reclined — answer 
half-drowned in the storm — the king half-rose— he half-assumed the spear— morning with 
A«//-opened eyes — her eyes were half-closed in sleep — a half-formed sigh !" 

Whistle — 

'■' He ivhistled as he went," (verbatim from Dryden's 'he whistled as he tventfor want of 
thought') — the withered femivhistles- — my grey beard whistled — the blastwhislled through every 
warrior's hair — whistling tree— the winds whistling — he whistling strides along — he shall whist- 
ling return — whistling locks — whistling hair — feebly-whistling grass — grass which whistles in 
the wind — the dark moss whistles — whistling heath — whistling blast." 

Gathered — 

" Gathered smiles — gathered rage — gathered mists." 

Roll is of frequent occurrence : 

" The gleam of broken steel rolled" (a false metaphor !) — the helmet rolled — thunder 
rolls — the foe is rolled — the storm is rolled — the voice of music is rolled — they are rolled 
together like mist — red rolled his eyes of rage — his soul was rolled into itself — he saw him 
rolled in a blast — waves of Erin roll in light — the spirit of Loda rolled into himself — she 
rolled her eye on the youth — the tear rolled down her cheek — they rolled back from his side — 



94 

they were rolled away — they roll their silent eyes — dark-rolling years — the blue stream is 
rolling — slow-rolling eyes of Comala— grey rolled the streams — rolling clouds — the shield 
fell rolling on the earth — his red eyes rolled on me in love — a cloud is rolled along thy soul 
— so rolled his sparkling eyes." 

The scriptural expression, " wings of the wind," often 
meets us : 

" Spirits in a nightly cloud when they strive for the wintry wings of wind — the winds are 
beneath with their wings — the winds departed on their wings — be near with all your wings, ye 
winds — depart on thy wings, O wind — we ride on the wings of the roaring winds — summer 
gales, shaking their light wings on a lake — the meeting of ghosts in the dark wing of winds — 
Cormar travelled on the wings of the wind." 

Dweller is also frequent ; the idea, as well as the expression, 
being taken, we presume, from the first verse of the lxxx Psalm: 
" thou that dwellest between the Cherubim :" 

" Thou dweller between the harps — dweller between the shields — dweller of battle's wing, 
(a curious dwelling-place!) blue-eyed dwellers of the tomb — dweller of eddying winds — 
dweller of thick mist — lovely dweller of the cave — trembling dweller of the rock — dwellers of 
the skirts of night — dwellers of rocks — young dweller of their souls — dwellers of Loda — dark- 
dwelling maid of Ardven — dwellers of Loda's hall — dweller of my thoughts by night." 

" Wander — 

The boy, young wanderer of the field — Thou wanderer unseen, viz : the breeze of the 
valley — my son, a young wanderer in the field — the wandering of five dogs — the wandering 
of boughs — the wandering of herds — the wandering of tears — the wandering of blasts — deaths 
wander like shadows — the stars of night red-wandering in the west — a lock which wandered 
in the blast — wandering cloud — wandering blood — wandering locks — her eyes were wandering 
flames — fair wanderer of the clouds." 

Echo is heard more frequently repeated in Ossian, than in her 
most favoured abodes at the Lakes of Killarney. We have 

"Echoing woods — echoing groves — echoing hills— echoing vales— -echoing halls — echoing 
walls — echoing rocks — echoing bay — echoing fray — echoing strife— -echoing field — echoing shield 
— echoing tree — echoing steel — echoing strokes — echoing isles — echoing main — echoing Termoth 



95 

—echoing Ardven — echoing Cona— echoing Morven —echoing Selma — echoing Gulmal— echo- 
ing Cromla — echoing Craca— echoing Caracha — echoing Etha — echoing Sora." 

We have also a superabundance of Moss : 

" Mossy rocks — mossy streams — mossy plains — mossy towers — mossy cave — mossy hill — 
mossy bank — mossy stone — mossy fountain — mossy brow — the moss of years — heads of moss." 

And of Clouds : 

" Slow as a gathering cloud — we see the cloud of death — like the cloud of a shower — thy 
form is like a watery cloud." 

And of Fire : 

"Beam of fire — soul of fire — helmet of fire — pillar of fire — the kings on either side are 
likejires — a burning fire — a hlue fire — the spreading of their fire — his rage was a fire — my 
eyes roll in fire — thy sword is a vapour half-kindled with fire — thine eyes a furnace of 
fire" 

The same images are repeated almost as frequently as the same 
epithets. The moon, for instance, is presented to us in every page, 
in every hue, in all the variety of her phases : dark-robed, bloody, 
aged, darkened, half-enlightened, dim and red on the western wave ; 
wan and cold in the east ; in autumn, full-orbed, eclipsed, and dim. 
Meteors also are as numerous, continually shooting and darting to 
and fro ; and when ever a maiden appears we may be sure the rain- 
bow is not far distant. 

"Bright as a rainbow on streams came Lulan's white-bosomed maid — Strinadona's 
face was heaven's bow in showers — Who fell on Carun's banks ? — He was blooming as the 
bow of the shower — Vinvela came in her beauty, like the showery bow — I see thee fair 
moving on the plain, bright as the boiv of heaven — Ryno was like the bow of the shower 
seen far distant on the stream — The daughters of Morven came forth like the bow of the 
shower." 



96 

Not contented with telling us once that " a star dim twinkled 
through his form," he informs us again that — 

"A red star with twinkling beam looked through his floating hair" — and again, that "a 
red star looked through the plumes of his helmet" — once more he says, "thy form is like a 
watery cloud, when we see the stars behind it with their weeping eyes." 

Even his metaphysical ideas are obtruded upon us again and 
again : 

" Pleasant is the joy of grief. It is like the shower of spring, when it softens the branch 
of the oak, and the young leaf lifts its green head." — Carrickthura. " The joy of grief belongs 
to Ossian amidst his dark brown years." — Temora, book vii. Fingal commands Ossian to 
" raise to joy his grief," viz: the king of Lochlin's. — Fingal, book v. The son of Semo "saw 
Fingal victorious, and mixed his joy with grief." — Id. The blue-eyed son of Semo said to 
Carril, " send thou the night away in song; and give the joy of grief" — Fingal, book i. 

" The joy of grief," says Laing, "is an abstract and refined ex- 
pression of the pleasure with which we dwell on fictitious distress; an 
idea infinitely too complex for a barbarian, but a subject much can- 
vassed at the time both by Burke and Smith. The expression is 
more poetical than just ; the satisfaction arising from fictitious wo 
may amount to pleasure, but can never constitute positive joy. But 
' the joy of grief is an expression of curious felicity, which it is 
impossible to translate with the same energy into another language." 
Accordingly the translator into Gaelic has failed in rendering this 
expression, Tha solas ami tuireadh. "Solas" says Laing, " is literally 
solatium, solace; tuireadh, a request, a dirge, sorrow, is derived from 
tuirse, tired ;* but the question would appear an insult to the most 
credulous understanding, whether Tha solas ami tuireadh was an ex- 
pression used by Ossian in the third century, or by Macpherson, 
unable to give an adequate expression of the joy of grief." 

* Lloyd's Preface, translated in Nicholson's Irish Hist. Lib. 



91 



SECTION V. 

On the Language of Ossian. 

Language, like every thing human, is fluctuating and liable to 
constant change. Even where it is preserved by written rules, it is 
not exempt from mutations and corruptions. In the course of ages 
it suffers so much alteration as to be scarcely recognizable as the 
same language. Its fate is similar to that of the ship that is con- 
stantly repaired by new timbers, or the metaphysician's stocking, 
which, by frequent wearing and darning, had its personal identity 
rendered questionable. 

Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos, 
Prima cadunt ; ita verborum interit oetas, 
Et juvenum ritu florent modo nata, vigentque. 



Hor. 



As when the forest, with the bending year, 
First sheds the leaves which earliest appear, 
So an old age of words maturely dies, 
Others, new born, in youth and vigour rise. 



Francis. 



The history of all languages bears evidence to the truth of these 
observations of the Roman poet. It was strikingly exemplified in his 
native tongue, nor is it less so in our own.* How few can at present 

* Niebhur, in his Travels in Arabia, observes that the " Arabian language, one of the most 
ancient and general in the world, has had the fate of other living languages which have been 
spoken through many ages, and by the inhabitants of different provinces and countries re- 
mote from one another. It has gradually undergone such an alteration, that the Arabic spo- 
ken and written by Mahomet, may now be regarded as a dead language." 

O 



98 

understand the writings of Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, or the " Chro- 
nykle" of Wintown, Chaucer, or the whole even of so late a writer as 
Spenser, without the help of a glossary ? But the advocates of the 
authenticity of Ossian, maintain that his language was exempt from 
the usual vicissitudes ; that the insulated situation of the kingdom of 
Morven prevented the introduction of foreign terms ; and that it has 
flowed down to us through the channel of oral tradition, uncontami- 
nated and pure as when it flowed from the lips of the Caledonian 
bard. The victories of the Highland Scots over the Roman legions, 
the subsequent introduction of Christianity, the visits of the Danes 
and Norwegians, their occasional commercial intercourse with the 
Lowlanders, and their subjection to the crowns of Scotland and of 
England, never corrupted the purity of their immaculate tongue ! 
The people, indeed, degenerated into barbarism, but the language 
remained uncorrupt, to attest to these degenerate times, the genius 
and refinement of the days of old ! Widely different has been the 
fate of the same language in Ireland, where it was written according 
to grammatical rules, and where it had legislators, philosophers, and 
poets, who might be considered as its guardians against innovation 
and corruption. In defiance of just laws and sage maxims, and the 
more popular influence of song, it has undergone such revolutions as 
would prevent the best Irish scholars from understanding any com- 
positions of the grandson of Comhal, were any such really extant. 
They would be to him as the annosa volumina vatum, to the contem- 
poraries of Horace ; or, as the fragments yet remaining of the Brehon 
laws to the most erudite Irish antiquary. But the Gaelic version of 
Ossian presented to the public by Sir John Sinclair, is in the lan- 
guage spoken at the present day, and accompanied with no difficulty 
which every ordinary Irish or Erse scholar cannot easily overcome. 
Of course, it is justly regarded as the fabrication of Macpherson and 



V 



99 

his coadjutors. We have already noticed General Vallanceys detec- 
tion of imposition in the few lines of the pretended original which 
Macpherson had the indiscreet temerity to publish. O'Flanagan, 
secretary to the Gaelic Society of Dublin, speaks of it as " the 
detected forgery of a modern corrupt dialect/'* That excellent Irish 
scholar, Mr. O'Reilly, author of the " Chronological Account of nearly 
four hundred Irish Writers" speaking of Cormac, monarch of Ire- 
land, A. D. 250, some of whose compositions are said to be still pre- 
served, justly observes, (p. xxiii,) " if the genuine Poems of Oisin were 
extant, their language would be the same as that of Cormac's works, 
which are nearly unintelligible to the generality of Irish readers, and 
completely so to the vulgar. The language of those poems, which the 
Highland Society have given to the world, as the originals of Oisin, 
is the living language of the Highlanders of the present day, and if 
properly spelled and read by an Irish scholar, would be intelligible to 
the most illiterate peasant in Ireland." The learned Doctor O'Conor, 
than who, no one was ever more competent to give an opinion on this 
subject, for no one was ever more profoundly versed in Irish litera- 
ture, expresses himself in a similar manner. " Lingua enim Hiber- 
nica, qua Incolce Hibernice et Albania nunc vulgo utuntur, in pluri- 
bus diversa est ab antiqua ; et cum id in Codicibus scriptis pateat, 
quis, nisi partiwn studiis abreptus, non percipit, diver sit at em longe 
majorem necessario oriri debere in lingua non scriptaT He notices 
the changes which have taken place in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin 
languages ; and observes that the Greek liturgies of Basil and Chry- 
sostom, though publicly read even now in the Greek churches, are 
unintelligible by the common people. That the Latin tongue has 
experienced as great a change, is evident from the verses of the Salii, 

* Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, pp. 25, 26. 

o 2 



100 

the laws of the xii tables, and the inscription on the columna rostrata 
of Duillius, sculptured only 150 years before Cicero. 

Polybius assures us that the most learned of his contemporaries 
could with difficulty understand the articles of the treaty made with 
the Carthaginians after the expulsion of the kings. Great changes 
took place in the Roman language, from intrinsic causes, before the 
Goths subjugated Italy. As long as languages are destitute of 
learned men to give them stability, so long must they fluctuate and 
be liable to be vitiated by new inflexions, by idioms and solecisms, 
ignoble and plebeian. Every nation borrows the peculiar idiom of 
the foreigners and neighbours with whom it carries on commerce; 
what is good is easily changed for the worse, and the greater the cor- 
ruption, the more strongly does it adhere to the speech of the vulgar. 
Now if the more polished tongues undergo such mutations, much 
more, must we conclude, will those which are barbarous experience 
similar vicissitudes. In the lapse of ages, and especially since the 
invasion of the English, the native language of the Irish, not only of 
the common people, but of the nobles and gentry, has been greatly 
contaminated.* 

Doctor O'Conor says, there is in Stowe Library an unedited rhyth- 
mical poem, ascribed to01iol-01am,who flourished in the third century. 
Whether it was really the production of Oliol-Olam or not is ques- 
tionable; its antiquity, however, cannot be doubted, "cum ex Codice 
vetusto Congabhala description fuerit, qui a monasterio Dungallense, 
ante iv. Magistrorum tempora, summa cum veneratione servabatur." 
In the margin of this poem, the Doctor's grandfather had, with his 
own hand, written "ni maith thuigim an tsean duan so." "I do not 

* The curious reader may see this subject illustrated at greater length in the original work 
of Doctor O'Conor. 



101 

well understand this ancient poem." It is entitled Catk Mucruimha. 
Keating, O'Flaherty, and others, notice it, but in such a manner as 
evinces them to have laboured under the same difficulty as the vene- 
rable O'Conor.* Colgan, speaking of the poems of Dallanus, says, 
they are written in the ancient style, and that, consequently, they 
were in a great degree unintelligible in after times, even to many who 
were skilled in the old idiom of their country. " A multis alioquin 
in veteri patrio idiomate versatis, nequeunt yenetrari."-\ The same 
author notices an Irish manuscript on parchment, in the Irish library, 
at Louvain, in which Saint Patrick and Coilte are introduced con- 
versing, and pronounces it to be a forgery from the style indepen- 
dently of the anachronism, for Coilte lived in the reign of Cormac, 
A. D. 250. Est commentithun, et posterioris cevi ut ex ipso stylo 
satis liquet. He passes the same judgment on another work, in which 
Saint Patrick and Oisin are interlocutors.^ 

But we need not have recourse to reasoning nor to learned 
authorities, since Macpherson himself and his friends, by a just fata- 
lity ever attendant on imposture, sufficiently confute their own 
hypothesis by their own confessions. The former, in several of his 
notes, pretends that he has been able to distinguish a spurious from a 
genuine production of Ossian, by the language alone. Thus, in the 
third note of Cath-Loda, he states, that the names of certain 
warriors 

'• Are mentioned as attending Comhal in his last battle against the tribe of Morni, in a 
poem which is still preserved. It is not the work of Ossian ; the phraseology betrays it to be 



* O'Flaherty says, " I do not suppose the poem to be genuine, because, in the benedic- 
tions which he gives Eugtfnius living and dead, he uses a style and expression totally un- 
known to pagan ages."— Ogy. vol. ii. p. 228. 

f O'Conor's Prolegomena, p. lxxiv. 

J Vide Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores. — Ep. Nun. p. lxi. 



102 



a modern composition. It is something like those trivial compositions which the Irish bards 
forged, under the name of Ossian, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." 

Again, in the first note to the third duan of the same poem, he 

says, 

" The interpolations (of the bards) are so easily distinguished from the genuine remains 
of Ossian, that it took me very little time to mark them out, and totally to reject them. If the 
modern Scotch and Irish bards have shewn any judgment, it is in ascribing their own compo- 
sitions to names of antiquity, for by that means, they themselves have escaped tbat contempt, 
which the authors of such futile performances must necessarily have met with, from people of 
true taste." 

Macpherson was privileged to write this, for no one could appre- 
ciate the judgment of the modern bards more highly than he ; none 
has been so successful a rival of their dishonesty. He deserves to 
reign sole monarch in the dominion of literary imposture. In the 
second note to Carrick-Thura, he speaks of a poem of Ossian on the 
strife of Crona, which " it was impossible for him to procure with 
any degree of purity." Why then did he not give it to the world 
in its impurity, to prove that he was not uttering a falsehood, and 
leave it to the purgation of some Celtic Aristarchus ? Speaking of 
the poem " Fion gal na buai," in a note to the 7th book of Temora, 
he says, that from the phraseology it appears to be ancient ; and in a 
note to the 8th book, "from the language (of some Hibernian poems in 
his hands) and allusions to the times in which they were writ, I should 
fix the date of their composition to the fifteenth or sixteenth century/' 

It is evident then, from the confessions of the great fabricator 
himself, that the Gaelic language has suffered such changes and cor- 
ruptions as indicate a marked difference between its ancient and mo- 
dern compositions ; consequently the hypothesis that Ossiahs Poems 
have been handed down in an intelligible form, by oral tradition, is 



103 

altogether destitute of foundation. Even Graham, one of the most 
desperate supporters of their authenticity, is constrained to admit, 
that, " in the lapse of ages, a few terms should become obsolete, and 
that others of more recent origin should be introduced in their stead. ' 
He might have added, that his compatriot, Kennedy, the pedagogue, 
was guilty of great indiscretion, in giving the Earse line, " Ruidh 
fuaimneach arm mar Spiorad Lodda" as the original of Macpher- 
son's line, " he rushed in the sound of his arms, as the spirit ot 
Lodda."* But he was ignorant that Macpherson had given Cruth 
Loduin" as the more genuine original, and thus unwarily betrayed 
the lying inventions of his school. 

Some of the verses that have been published as those of Ossian, 
by Scotch editors, are, in the judgment of Doctor O'Conor, widely 
different both in idiom and orthography, from those of our genuine 
Irish bards. The idiom of Homer, he observes, does not differ more 
widely from that of the modern Greeks, than the Irish language, as 
exhibited in certain verses of Molingus and Adamnanus preserved in 
the Annals of Tigernach, differs from those Scotch compositions, 
which are in style more corrupt than our common vernacular Irish, 
and both in sound and appearance are equally offensive to the ears 
and the eyes of the learned. -j* The Doctor here alludes particularly to 
a collection of Erse poems, in possession of the Highland Society, if; 
containing more than 11,000 verses. In these poems the orthogra- 
phy seems to be adapted to the vulgar pronunciation, and the letters 
k, w } x, y, z 9 which are never used in genuine Irish compositions, 
every where meet the eye. 

As instances of the recent coinage of words in the modern Gaelic 
Ossian, he quotes the following : Houdir, author ; nyceith, night ; 

* Laing's Preface. f Ep. Nun. cxxi. % See the Report, p. 92. 



104 

spiorad, spirit ; corp (corpus,) body ; beist, beast ; ros, rose ; holla, 
hall ; roda, road ; arm, arms ; anam (anima,) soul; muinaidh (mon- 
tes,) mountains ; ceir (cera,) wax ; libhearn (liburna,) navis ; stoirm, 
storm Ml 

The following words and phrases from Macpherson, have been 
noticed by Laing, as of modern introduction to the Gaelic : 

Earradh, literally the English array from the Teutonic, raia, rada, ordo, hence raiment, 
array. 

As diasul, or greine, would signify Sunday, he was obliged to adopt the English idiom in 
translating the day of the sun,* S'grian orradh na beinn, the sun gilding the hills. 

Anam, the soul, from anima ; deur, a tear, derived by Lloyd from the Teutonic ; am- 
measg, amidst, expressions which no credulity, however weak, can impute to Ossian, and 
which, instead of the second (third) century, demonstrate a recent translation into a mixed 
language of the eighteenth. 

The warrior's grave is translated palin, a shroud, from the Latin pallium, and the 
English pall, 

Faisich, a desert, is a correlative term, suggested by its contrast with peopled or culti- 
vated fields ; but as all places were equally desert to a tribe of hunters, who subsisted in the 
desert, there was no relative to suggest either the idea or the name. The same observation is 
applicable to autumn's dark storms. Among hunters who have neither harvests nor fruits, 
" autumni perinde nomen et bona ignorantur." 

The English name and idiom of steel for armour are assigned by Macpherson, from his 
own Highlander, " steel speaks on steel " to the third century, when steel was seldom or never 
used in armour by the Romans themselves. — The German stahel, the Saxon and Scandina- 
vian stall, is repeated by name. Chuinic is e na stalin chruai. " She saw him in his hard steel." 

Macpherson, it seems, was greatly puzzled to find an adequate 
expression for boss. To transcribe itself would have been too gross, 
and therefore he chose " the Saxon and German cup. Stacked cop- 
paix a V Kair an sciath, seven bosses rose on the shield : " 

* The day of the sun is an imitation from Ezekiel, i. 28 : " The appearance of the bow 
that is in the cloud, in the day of rain." 



m 



105 

" If a circumstance can render the detection more complete, the hundred cups of the Irish bal- 
lad of Erragon, are converted in the battle of Lora, into ten shells {sliogh) studded with gems, 
that gladdened once the kings of the world. But in Cathmor's marvellous shield (an obvious 
imitation of the shield of Achilles,) copan a cup, so fastidiously rejected as unknown to Ossian 
in its proper signification, is applied metaphorically to the seven bosses tipt with seven 
stars of night, that spoke like a peal of bells, each in a separate voice or vowel to seven kino's." 

" Riding, applied in English to ships, is a familiar idiom ; and the dark riders of ocean is 
an easy metaphor, not to be translated with impunity into a different language. Marchaidh 
a chuain mhoir, the horseman of the great sea, is a harsh and obvious translation of the rider 
of ocean, equally ridiculous with eques maris, or Cavalier de la mer, were it translated into 
French."— Laing's Dissertation. 

Mr. Laing and others, besides Doctor O'Conor, thought they 
could discover in these and similar terms, ample and satisfactory 
proofs of modern forgery. Doctor Graham meets the objection, and 
in that part of his Essay which we deem the most valuable, endea- 
vours, not without success, to prove that " the Gauls who invaded 
Italy, from the period of Tarquinius to the sacking of Rome, were 
really of Celtic stock, and, therefore, it might be expected that 
their language would influence that of the Romans in a very material 
degree ; hence, it follows, that no legitimate argument against the 
authenticity of Ossian can be derived from the similarity that may 
be traced between certain Latin and Gaelic terms." This is cer- 
tainly plausible. Doctor O'Conor was aware of the objection, and 
states the admission of Quinctilian, that the Latins borrowed many 
words from the Gauls, as Rheda and Peioritum. But it by no 
means follows, that such words as have been quoted above, are of 
Celtic origin, since in the really ancient Celtic poems, far different 
terms are used to express the same things, and they were never ad- 
mitted into the Irish vernacular tongue, except in liturgies, or after 
the English invasion. The word Lochlan, which is a hundred times 

p 



106 

employed by Macpherson, to signify the Danes is found in no poem 
earlier than the tenth century. The most ancient MS. poem extant, 
ascribed to Ossian, is in the Bodleian library. It is entitled in the 
catalogue, Gigantomachia, and was written in the fourteenth century. 
Price, the librarian, told Doctor O'Conor, that he shewed it to Mac- 
pherson, who, for once, had the honesty to confess, that by reason of 
its contractions, it was to him totally unintelligible and illegible !* 
So true it is, that not only no genuine poems of Ossian exist, but even 
those of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries ascribed to him, still 
remain without a faithful editor or transcriber. Well, therefore, may 
we join with Hume, in his letter to Gibbon, expressing wonder, "that 
any man of common sense could have imagined it possible, that 
above twenty thousand verses, along with numberless historic facts, 
could have been preserved by oral tradition, during fifty genera- 
tions, by the rudest, perhaps, of all the European nations, the 
most necessitous, the most turbulent and unsettled. [Loquitur de 
Scotice Albanicce monticolis et Insulanis.~\ Where a supposition is so 
contrary to common sense, any positive evidence of it ought never to 
be regarded. "-j- But the wonder is still farther increased, when we 
consider, that of all compositions in existence, none are so difficult 
to remember as Macpherson's Ossian, because it has no regularly 
consecutive series of ideas, like the Iliad, or Mneid, or Tasso's 
Jerusalem. It is a heterogeneous and chaotic mass of bombastic 
epithets, and poetic scraps ; the reflection, not of " nature's calm 
image," but of an artificial landscape; not from a smooth, but an 
agitated surface, where 

* : Glimmering fragments of a broken sun, 
Banks, trees, and skies in wild disorder run." 



* Rerum. Hib. Scriptores, vol. i. Ep. Nun. pp. ci. cxxiii. 

f Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, vol. i. p. 149, London, 1796. 



107 

We have read of a lady who could repeat a considerable part of 
Pope's Homer, and knew a scholar who committed to memory the 
Agamemnon of iEschylus ; but does any one exist who can repeat a 
single page of Macpherson's Ossian ? 

Those who maintain that Ossian's Poems have been preserved by 
oral tradition, tell wonderful stories of the strength and capacity of 
Highland memories. Sir John Sinclair informs us, that "Captain 
John Mac-Donald declared, that when he was about twelve or fifteen 
years of age, he could repeat from one hundred to two hundred Gae- 
lic poems of different lengths ; that he learned them from an old man 
about eighty years of age, who sung them for years to his father when 
he went to bed at night, and in the spring and winter before he rose 
in the morning." Other instances are adduced of persons who "could 
repeat for hours on each of three successive days, many thousand lines 
of ancient poetry, and, as appeared to Doctor Stewart, with perfect 
correctness." 

That the Highlanders have retentive memories, and can repeat 
long poems and tales, is not disputed. The question is, has any one 
of them ever repeated a single poem which was the true original 
Gaelic, from which Macpherson translated any part of his Ossian ? 
And now that they actually do exist in Gaelic, into which we have a 
perfect persuasion that they have been translated from the English, 
can any Highlander repeat them ? We believe not. — Not because 
modern Highlanders have worse memories than their forefathers, but 
because the modern Gaelic, into which the poems have been rendered, 
is of a totally different structure from that of the ancient bards, and 
wants that peculiar rhythmical cadence, which, like our own English 
rhymes, presented such facilities to the memory. 

Had Macpherson really possessed any genuine Gaelic MSS., and 
understood them, he would not have left us under any doubt of their 

p 2 



108 

existence, but given us their description and history. He would 
have told us where and when they were discovered, in what measure 
the poems were composed, and in what dialect, whether in the Bearla 
Feme, the dialect of the learned, or of the Bearla rustach, the dia- 
lect of the vulgar. Let us see how a writer who has such a MS. 
proceeds. He tells distinctly all he knows concerning it, or at least 
all that is necessary to be known ; where found, and where to be 
seen; on what substance, and in what form written; the language, 
the character, the number of pages, whether entire or mutilated. 

Thus Doctor O'Conor speaks of the Codex Stowensis, No. I. : 

" Codex membranaceus est, in IVto ; lingua et characteribus Hibernicis. Constat foliis 
42, quorum quajque pagina duobus columnis divisa est. Desunt folia nonnulla in initio et 
in fine, unde difficile est dictu quo aevo exaratus fuerit. ***** Characteres sunt 
rotundi, nitidi, elegantes. Literarum et atramenti talis est uniformitas, et pulchritudo, ut 
vix cedat arti typographical, et atramentum seternitati sacrum videatur. Litera u nullibi scri- 
bitur forma angulari v, sive consonans, sive vocalis, neque unquam duplicatur ut w. Litera i 
nullo puncto, nulla aspiratione supra notata designatur. Nullibi extat litera j consonans, 
vel y, vel ce dipthongus ; nee quaevis est punctuatio praeter punctum simplex. Numeri sunt 
ubique Romani." 

He then proceeds to analyze the contents ; in which task we deem 
it unnecessary to follow him. We shall only repeat how he describes 
the external form of a poem in this MS. : 

"Fob 7. p. 2. col. 1. a poem commences, Torinis, Inis an tu'xr, cathair Conain, (Torinis, 
insula turns, arx Conani.) It consists of forty-eight lines, each of which, by a rhythmical me- 
thod peculiar to the Irish, is resolvable into two lines or one distich, the rhythm in the middle 
of the line corresponding and harmonizing with the last syllable in the end." 

He afterwards gives us a history of the rhythmic art among the 
Irish, commencing page lxvi. of the second of his Prolegomena. As 
this topic is so intimately connected with the subject of this Essay, 



109 

it will not be deemed irrelevant, we trust, to enrich it with some 
extracts translated and abridged from his learned work. 

He informs us that O'Flaherty and Harris affirm that Fortchern, 
the son of Deaga, and Nedius, the son of Adneus, two celebrated 
poets in the reign of Concovar, king of Ulster, flourished at Eamania 
thirty-four years A. C. ; that Fortchern wrote various precepts of 
poesy, and various kinds of verse ; and that his book is entitled 
Uraiceacht na n eacgios, (Precepts of the Poets,) that it contained a 
hundred varieties of versification ; that Kennfeola, the son of Olioll, 
interpolated it many ages after, viz. A. D. 628. They add that 
Fortchern, Nedius, and Aitherneus, poet of Concovar, were among 
the poets who established the legal enactments, called Breatha nirnhe, 
or celestial judgments. 

Doctor O'Conor does not place implicit faith in these statements, 
but maintains it to be a well established fact, that the poetic art was 
cultivated in Ireland from a very remote period, as is plain from the 
declaration of Adamnanus, in the 7th century, in the first book of 
his Life of Columbanus, c. 42, where he has some notices of Cronan, 
a poet, who, according to the custom of his art, ex more sua artis, 
sang his songs in a modulated manner, modulabiter. He affirms 
this, not from the authority of one passage in Adamnanus, or from 
verses yet extant of Columbanus, but from many inedited remains of 
the bards preserved by Tigernach and other ancient historians. 

Some have affirmed that the rhythmic or rhyming art was unknown 
before the eleventh century, and that, consequently, the fragments 
alluded to must have been subsequent to that age. They egregiously 
err, and Muratorius (delta poesia Italiana,) meant to confine his 
observations on this subject to the modern tongues, since he repeat- 
edly testifies that rhyme was used by the ancients. That it was 
known in Ireland before the introduction of Christianity, is evident 



110 

from the practice of Cronan, whom the whole context of Adam- 
nanus declares to have been a heathen. That this art passed from 
the Irish to the Anglo-Saxons, is demonstrated by Adhelm, who was 
himself educated by Maildulph, an Irishman, from whom he learned 
the Latin tongue. He was the first of the Anglo-Saxons who wrote 
Latin, in which language he composed a rhyming poem, De Virgin- 
itate, as Turner remarks, while he iniquitously (inique) conceals 
where he received his education. 

Doctor O'Conor notices several other authors who wrote in rhyme, 
and makes particular mention of a poem on the Trinity, composed by 
Columbanus, sent to Saint Gregory at Rome, and published in the 
Triad, p. 473. In this poem the peculiar Irish rhythmical structure 
is conspicuous, namely, the syllable in the middle of the line, rhymes 
with the syllable at the end ; an equal space of time being preserved 
between the first and second division ; whence it is apparent, that 
though written in Latin, it is constructed on an Hibernian model. 

Turner says, he was led to examine Adhelm, by observing that 
three lines, which Simeon, of Durham, quotes from him, rhyme in 
the middle. " Here then is an example of rhyme in an author who 
lived before the year 700, and he Mas an Anglo-Saxon. Whence 
did he derive it ? Not from the Arabs : they had not yet reached 
Europe. I would rather refer it to the popular songs in his own lan- 
guage, or in the language of his neighbours." He must have known, 
and he ought to have informed his readers, that Adhelm borrowed it 
from the Irish, among whom he was educated. 

The Hibernian words rann, rimh, riomh, rinn, have no other sig- 
nification than rhyme. Columbanus, as Turner admits, had written 
verses of the same kind as those which Adhelm composed in rhyme, 
and, consequently, also admits that it was from Columbanus, Adhelm 
learned or adopted the practice. Columbanus himself learned it from 



Ill 

the Irish bards, who, when instructed in the Christian religion, and 
a knowledge of the Latin tongue, deemed it a duty of sacred obliga- 
tion to deliver the precepts of the new faith in the same style as they 
had been accustomed to employ in delivering the precepts of the 
Druids, and celebrating the heroic deeds of their countrymen. Tur- 
ner subjoins, that " Albinus quotes a rhymed poem of Sedulius, an 
Irishman, who lived in the middle of the fifth century ;" and Bede 
says, that Adhelm wrote verses in imitation (ad exemplum) of Sedu- 
lius. Turner affirms, and Usher demonstrates, that this Sedulius was 
an Irishman. Bayle and Labbe hold a different opinion, but it is 
supported by no authority, while that of Usher is confirmed by the 
testimony of Fabricius, Possevinus, Trithemius, Sixtus Senensis, Bel- 
larmine, and Cave. But independently of such testimonies, the 
name of Sedulius alone, which is exclusively Hibernian, is sufficient 
authority. There were eight men of the name of Sedulius, all of 
them conspicuous for their piety and learning, as is attested by the 
Annals of Innisfail, of the Four Masters, and Tigernach. 

No better specimen of the rhyming form of poetry, peculiar to 
Ireland, can be adduced, than the following lines from a hymn of 
Sedulius : 

"A solis ortus carchne — ad usque terrse \im\tem, 
Christum canamus principem— natum Maria \itgine." 

Nothing of the kind extant is more ancient than this. The Latin 
missionaries who crowded to Ireland borrowed the practice, and 
thence it became general. 

That the ancient Irish had fixed rules of poetry, is incontestible. 
They sang their lays to the sound of the harp, in presence of 
their chiefs. Buchanan and Camden both agree, that many of the 



112 

ancient customs were preserved even till their times, and that until 
the reign of James the First, little change had taken place except in 
religion. And here we do not contend for an extravagant antiquity, 
of which no vestiges remain. The manuscripts yet extant, the form 
of the letters, the antiquity of the style, the genius of the Hibernian 
tongue, the infinite variety of events which all mutually accord, the 
ancient names of places, with the chronological adjuncts of persons 
and things, leave no room for doubt as to their historic truth. 

Some affirm from the Uraiceacht of Fortchern, that there were an- 
ciently one hundred varieties of verse among the Hibernian bards. 
But in all the more ancient specimens which have reached our times, 
there is great simplicity and uniformity. The rhythm consists in an 
equal distance of intervals, and similar terminations, each line being- 
divisible into two, that it may be more easily accommodated to the 
voice and the music of the bards : it is not formed by the nice collo- 
cation of long and short syllables, but by a certain harmonic rhythm, 
adjusted to the voice of song by the position of words which touch 
the heart and assist the memory. In every ancient Irish verse a 
pause in the very middle of it may be discerned, from which the suc- 
ceeding clause of the same verse commences, and making harmony 
with the preceding, is completed in the same space of time, and with 
a similar termination. Hence, each verse consists of two times, ter- 
minating with a like cantilena, and making two verses as to sound. 

The quantity of a syllable was in no manner affected either by 
the number or kind of consonants preceding a vowel, provided the 
same time were occupied, and the final sound observed from pause to 
pause : and though neither the same number of syllables occurred, 
nor the same sound were observed in the finals, the art itself, and the 
skill of the musician in lengthening or shortening the time, claimed 
the privilege of producing what was short, and abbreviating what 



113 

was long. The last syllable of each pause was always long ; for 
though the syllable were short, it was made long by dwelling on it a 
double space of time. These observations, however, do not apply to 
poetry, nor to that elegant and harmonious arrangement of its words 
and syllables, which the strict rules of the art require, but to poetry 
combined with music. 

No example exhibits the peculiar structure of poetry adapted to 
music by the Irish bards, and the mode in which the missionaries of 
the sixth century imitated them in Latin verses, better than a hymn 
in praise of Brigid, written by Ultanus Ardbracanensis, who died in 
655. Usher speaks of this hymn in Prhnordiis, p. 963, and it was 
published by Colgan, in Triade, p. 542. 

It commences thus : 

" Christus in nostra insula — quae vocatur Hibemia*, 
Ostensus est hominiiws — maximis mirabiliiws, &c." 

Giraldus Cambrensis testifies the superior skill of the Irish har- 
pers, in the following eloquent terms : 

" Tn musicis instruments prcs omni natione quam vidimus incomparabiliter est instructa. 
(Hibernia.) Non enim in his, sicut in Britannicis quibus assueti sumus, instruments, tarda et 
morata est modulatio, verum velox, et praeceps, suavis tamen, et jucundasonoribus. Mirum 
quod in tanta, tam praecipiti digitorum rapacitate, musica servatur proportio." 

Numerous testimonies of a similar kind might be adduced, but we 
deem it superfluous to pursue the subject farther in this place. 
Enough has been said, we should hope, to convince every one who 
has consulted but a single page of Macpherson's Gaelic Ossian, that 
it has no similitude to the style and structure of ancient Irish poetry. 
It is altogether a work of modern fabrication, translated into modern 

Q 



114 

Gaelic from the English Ossian, and interlarded with fragments of 
the Irish Fenian Tales, from which Macpherson first took the idea of 
constructing his pastoral epics. The Highland Society, in the 137th 
page of their report, justly observed that the publication of the entire 
original 

" Will afford an opportunity to those who question its authenticity, to examine nar- 
rowly the intrinsic evidence arising from the nature and construction of the language. This 
will be of the first importance in the dispute. The committee does not recollect any instance 
of a fabrication in a foreign language, or in a language supposed to be that of an ancient 
period, where, upon an accurate examination, internal proofs of the forgery have not been 
discovered in the very language alone in which the forgery was attempted to be conveyed." 

It was magnanimous in the committee to write thus. The origi- 
nal has been weighed in their own balance, and found wanting. The 
very first lines which Macpherson published, as a specimen of the 
ancient Ossian, betrayed the cheat, and exposed his ignorance of the 
ancient Gaelic language and versification ; and we feel strongly con- 
vinced that every succeeding investigation will tend only still farther 
to expose his impositions. 



SECTION VI. 

On the probable Era and Origin of the Poems attributed to Ossian. 

That Oisin, the son of Fin Mac-Cumhal, had acquired great 
reputation as a poet among his countrymen, may be justly concluded 
from the long and constant traditions of posterity. Fin was himself 
a poet, and, like the great Achilles, delighted in stringing the harp 
to the glorious deeds of heroes and of kings. But that any of the 
poems actually composed or sung either by him or Oisin, have been 



115 

handed down to our times, few will have the hardihood to affirm. In 
fact, the language in which they wrote or spoke, as we have before 
had occasion to remark, would not be intelligible at the present 
time. 

Fin, from his warlike achievements, was regarded as the prince 
of heroes, and in the romantic imaginations of his countrymen, he 
became at last invested with supernatural strength. Hence, many of 
the rude monuments of stone, found in different districts of Ireland, 
the rocky circle, the kist-vaens, and the huge trilithon, are ascribed 
by the vulgar, to the architectural power of Fin and his associates. 
Hence also his exploits became the frequent subject of song. He 
was to Ireland, as Arthur and the knights of the round table to 
England, the theme of many a legend, and the hero of many a tale. 

Walker, in his History of the Irish bards, (p. 110,) says that "se- 
veral of the poems attributed to Oisin are the production of bards of 
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as may be easily proved from some 
terms of language unknown to the Irish in earlier times." This may 
also be inferred from the change which took place in the application 
of poetry to subjects of fiction. At first it was the only vehicle of 
true history, and it was employed down to a very late period as the 
most eligible mode of recording real events. The Crony kil of 
Wyntown, and The Bruce of Barbour, though written in verse, are 
appealed to by Dalrymple and other historians, as to veracious 
authority. To such use was early Irish poetry devoted, and though 
it does not seem necessary to suppose that it excluded all fiction, a 
marked distinction must have been preserved between poems of real 
history, and those of imagination. Our native Irish historians of 
more modern times, such as Keating and O'Flaherty, frequently refer 
to ancient poems for proof or illustration, and nothing can exceed 
the bald and unpoetical character of many of the passages which 

q 2 



116 

they quote. They differ as far from Macpherson's high-sounding- 
bombast, as a naked savage from a powdered and perfumed courtier. 
In fact, they are mere prose, except in the metrical disposition of the 



w 



ords 



Nisi quod pede cerlo 
Differt sermoni, sermo merus. 

Hor. 

But as the learned editor of the " Reliques of Ancient Poetry " 
has observed, " after letters began to prevail, and history assumed a 
more stable form, by being committed to plain, simple prose, the 
songs of the scalds or bards began to be more amusing than useful. 
And in proportion as it became their business chiefly to entertain and 
delight, they gave more and more into embellishment, and set off 
their recitals with such marvellous fictions, as were calculated to cap- 
tivate gross and ignorant minds." " This," says Walker, " was pre- 
cisely the case in Ireland. Verse ceased to be used in our historical 
writings, about the twelfth or thirteenth century, and consequently it 
was no longer subservient to truth." 

The Fenian poems with which Macpherson was well acquainted, 
were, as their name implies, confined to the exploits of Fionn and his 
warriors : Oisin, Fergus, Dermod Dun, Caoilte, Goll Mac-Morne, 
the bald and senseless Conan, the blue-eyed Roinea, generous Gavar, 
mild Colla of curled locks, and others whose names and characters 
may be seen in J<t0J W ^e- •fe-tffttt Tbe-tfg, the poem of the Six- 
teen Men. Fionn is, of course, the principal hero, but not always, 
for Oillean sometimes appears to be a chief of even superior prowess. 
An opinion has been entertained, that these poems have some resem- 
blance to the rhapsodies of Homer, and that they might all be thrown 
together, so as to form one great epic ; but this opinion does not 
seem well founded, as each poem is generally complete in itself. 



117 

Notwithstanding, we have the same personages in most of them, and 
their characters are well discriminated, and consistently preserved: 
that of Conan, for instance, who is a species of Thersites; or some- 
thing between Thersites and Sir John FalstafF, boastful, presump- 
tuous, cowardly, yet capable of sometimes " screwing up his courage 
to the sticking place," altogether a character of much originality.* 

In these tales the machinery of enchantment is frequently em- 
ployed, and hence some of them are supposed by Walker to be of 
eastern origin, and introduced by missionaries from the monastic 
institutions of Italy, when they came to regulate the Roman Catholic 
Church in Ireland. He is also of opinion, that many Moorish and 
Arabian tales might have found their way hither during the commer- 
cial intercourse that subsisted between Spain and Gal way. He ob- 
serves that there is a marked resemblance between the Irish tale of 
Conloch, and the story of Rust am, as related by the Persian poet, 
Ferdusi. He also ascribes the Irish poem of Moira Borb to an 
Eastern origin, and thinks its heroine like the Armida of Tasso. The 
story of the ring, related by Trissino, in his Italia Liberata, is so 
strikingly similar to that in the Irish poem of the Chase, that "both, 
it may be presumed, were raised upon the same foundation. In 
both we discover the colouring of magic with which the Saracens of 
the middle ages, then adepts in chemistry, tinctured all their 
fables." 

But a belief in the arts of enchantment had been introduced to 
Ireland long prior to the age of the Saracens. Had Walker recol- 



* James Hardiman, Esq. M. R. I. A., the learned and ingenious author of the History of 
Galway, has in his possession a MS. copy of many of the Fenian poems, transcribed, in the 
Irish language, from the dictation of a Connaught peasant, and rendered verbatim into English. 
For the use of this collection, the author embraces the present occasion of making his grate- 
ful acknowledgments to its liberal and patriotic owner. 



118 

lected the 10th chapter of Keating's history, which records the con- 
quest of Ireland, by the Tuatha-De-Danans, he would have stated that 
the magic art was well known and successfully practised by those 
adventurers. It was said that they could infuse demons into the 
bodies of the slain, and send them forth to fight their battles over 
again ; as the Syrians, with whom they contended in Greece, found 
to their cost, till they prevented this species of resurrection by trans- 
fixing them with stakes of the mountain ash ! When the Tuatha- 
De-Danans came to Ireland, they brought with them four articles 
deemed precious, on account, we suppose, of some enchanted virtue, 
a brazen caldron; the spear of Looee Longhand, (Lughaidh Lam- 
fhada;) " a sword alone for death decreed;" and the famous Liagh 
fail, or stone of destiny. Some of them were so skilled in necro- 
mancy, that they obtained the name of De-Dannan, or Gods of 
Dannan, Dan itself being a word expressive of magic skill. They 
could raise tempests by their art, and throw as much mist over their 
enemies as Macpherson himself over his Ossianic heroes. 

Tales of oriental origin, as well as belief in necromancy, were 
known in Ireland in very early times, if her poetico-historical annals 
have any foundation in truth. The story of Lavra Lyngshy, one of 
the Irish monarchs who reigned some hundreds of years A. C, is so 
like that of the Phrygian king, Midas, that the one seems to be a 
transcript of the other. But the Irish version of it is in one respect 
an improvement. The important secret of the ears was communi- 
cated, not to the reeds, but to a -willow ; which willow being cut 
down and converted into a harp, resounded like the lyre of Anacreon, 
to only one favourite strain, " Lavra Lyngshy, has the ears of a 
horse." This is a pretty invention, but we prefer the ears of an ass 
in the Phrygian tale, as containing a just satire on the monarch's 
taste. Keating says, with great gravity, that he conceives this to be 



119 

rather a romantic tale, than genuine history. — Keating's History, 
vol. i. p. 361. Dublin, 1811. 

Mr. O'Reilly, in his valuable chronological account of Irish 
Writers, informs us that Beg Mac-De, an Irish bard, who died A. D. 
550, condemned the practice of sorcery in a poem beginning Olc b)i 
<l Uj3c<t, " evil the practice of sorcery." He appears to have been a 
1-iavTiQ icaKcov, a prophet of plagues ; for in another poem " he foretels 
the evils and destruction that were to fall on several places in Ire- 
land." 

It may readily be admitted then, that we can conclude nothing 
from the machinery of sorcery and enchantment employed in the 
Fenian tales, respecting their date. That it was antecedent to the 
invasion of Ireland by Henry the Second, may be inferred from the 
absence of all allusions to that event, as well as of images and ideas 
peculiarly English. We find nothing in them relative to the Sassa- 
nach, the Saxon, or English invader, though, in after times, that 
name became the burden of many a doleful and indignant strain : 
that it was subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, must be 
concluded from the frequency of their Christian allusions. Some 
of them may have been composed during the time of the Danish in- 
vasions, and been intended by their praises of the heroes of old, to 
stimulate the warriors of Ireland to expel the oppressors of their 
country. Others, like Conloch and the Chase, could have no such 
object. They appear to be of a character similar to that of the bal- 
lads of Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and Little John. Blair's observa- 
tion, that the imagery and description belong exclusively to the 
country in which the scene is laid, would apply to these poems much 
more strictly than to Macpherson's Ossian ; though a few of their 
allusions may be of foreign growth, and some of their imagery was 
most injudiciously rejected by Macpherson, as unrefined and unclassi- 



120 

cal. The Fenian heroes are often represented as feasting and drinking 
together, giving mutual presents and playing at chess. They quarrel 
— a blow is heard ringing from the fist of one on the ear of another, 
like that of a sledge on an anvil. The striker is punished by a blow 
of superior force, which breaks three teeth, and by the force of his 
fall, two ribs.* Oisin, in his conversations with Patrick, treats him 
with so little ceremony, that he sometimes gives him the lie direct. 
jf 6|oe-<t5 "obujcfj {)nl tt fdlcttjfie- ^jh, "For you that is a falsehood! 
defamer of Fionn ;" (See £_t*0) tid br<tybtXj{, Poem of Victory,) and 
in the Poem of the Chase, calls him, in Miss Brooke's translation : 

" Patrick of the scanty store, 
And meagre-making face." 

Naimh-Nuadh-Crothach, the daughter of the fierce Garbh Mac- 
Dolar, speaking of the high king of Greece, her persecutor, says, 
mo tHdtldf ttjft, my curse on him ! How would one of Macpher- 
son's heroes been horrified at such an expression from a lady of 
rank ! 

Goll Mac-Morne is described as a generous chief, always ready 
to spread his shield before his friends in danger. He is said in the 
poem of Bhin Bolbin, to come, not as Macpherson would have stated, 
like an eagle rushing from her cliffs on the wings of the roaring wind, 
but with the speed of a greyhound ; swift as a weasel on a rabbit ; 
natural and striking comparisons, though Macpherson may have 
thought them little accordant with his more lofty epic style, and as 
degrading perhaps to the least of his heroes, as the comparison in 
Homer, of Ajax, the bulwark of the Greeks, to an ass. 

* This quarrel forms the subject of the Irish poem, entitled "the Contestation of Goll 
with Luaidhe-ladir of hosts in the house of Teamor." This poem is in Mr. Hardiman's 
collection. 



121 

Similes, far from being crowded together in heaps, are not even 
frequent. The descriptions are generally brief, sometimes highly 
animated and picturesque. That of the horse or slender colt in the 
poem of " the Sixteen Men," occupies only three lines, and is as far 
from the elaborate, bombastic, epithet-abounding, description of 
Cuchullin's steeds in Macpherson, as nature and simplicity are from 
art and affectation. 

" Oa be<j|- <x jlujne <xgu^ a beal, 

CQ&rrgofo cean <x%rf f<xrr£ eabc/iom." 

" On a colt he came 
Of well-formed knees and mouth, and slender frame, 
Small ears, light flank, and bold expanded chest." 

Oisin's description of the fair enchantress in the poem of the 
Chase is more florid, and is certainly not equalled by any thing in 
Macpherson's poems. Addressing Saint Patrick, he tells him that 
Fionn — 

By a lake of crystal sheen, 
Spies a nymph of loveliest form and mein. 
Her cheeks as the rose were crimson bright, 

Her lips the red berries' glow ; 
Her breast as the blossoms downy white, 

Her brow as the virgin snow. 
Her locks were like the molten gold, 

Her eye as a freezing star : 
Shouldst thou, O sage, such nymph behold, 

Her beauty thy peace might mar. 

These extracts are leading us from our subject ; notwithstanding 
we are tempted to give another as beautifully descriptive of rural 
scenery. It is taken from the commencement of the poem, entitled 
" Bhin Bolbin." 



122 



Oisin speaks : 



Bhin Bolbin thou art sad to day ; 
Thou that wast erst of aspect gay 

And lovely to be seen ; 
O son of Calfruin ! then 'twas sweet, 
To find a soft and mossy seat, 

On its lofty summit green. 

Thou hill of hatdes, stained with gore, 
How oft thy fortress strong around, 
Where dwelt a hero bold of yore, 

Rose music sweet of horn and hound ; 
The bittern round thee boomed at night, 
The grouse, loud-whirring in her flight, 
Peopled thy heath, and every tree 
Rang with the small birds' melody. 

Yes, 'twas delight to hear the cry 

Of hounds along thy valleys sweep ; 
To hear the rock's wild son* reply 

From every cliff and steep ; 
To see the chiefs of the Fenian band, 
To slip the greyhounds ready stand ; 
And groups of maidens young and fair, 
That plucked, as they went, the flowrets rare ; 
With berries of every form and hue, 
Of crimson blush, or of glossy blue, 
From bramble and bush ; or cresses young, 
That by the crystal streamlet sprung : 
And passing sweet was the voice of their song, 
As the fair-haired damsels roved along. 



* Mac-alla, echo ; literally, the son of the rock. 



123 

Sweet too, by the source of the lonely stream, 

To see aloof the eagle sail; 
To hear her solitary scream, 

Burst startling o'er the vale ; 
To hear the otter's whining note ; 

Or mid the hollow mountain rocks, 

The barking of the wary fox ; 
Or mellow song of blackbird float 
From bower and grove, o'er wood and lawn, 
To evening hour from early dawn. 

As he recollects the past, and contrasts it with his present forlorn 
situation, he falls into a strain of touching pathos : 

With joy it thrilled my heart I vow, 
To sit upon the mountain's brow ; 

And all the glorious landscape view, 
The seven brave Fenian bands around, 
In war, in peace, still faithful found — 

But now my friends are few ! 
Then merry and gay, in the summer ray, 

They frolicked and they shone ; 
With autumn's blast away they past, • 

And I am left alone. 
My fate with tears, may dim your eye, 
And wake your tender sympathy. 

From such specimens we may conclude, that in whatever age these 
compositions were written, the art of poetry had been cultivated with 
some success. But we find in them nothing of the metaphysical thoughts 
of Macpherson, like "the joy of grief " or, as he might almost equally 
well have said, the grief of joy. Valour and generosity, particularly 
to the learned, are the frequent themes of eulogy, and sometimes 
we are favoured with a good prudential sentiment, as when Goll 
Mac-Morne is reminded in the poem of Dearg Mac-Dreithil, that — 

r2 



124 

" Le b-ucb c<xc<\ no comla;n 
Js-Ijl <un paid, bo cajmneam." 

" Al the breast of battle or conflict 
It is no time to remember injury." 

That other arts besides poetry had made some advances, may be 
learned from incidental notices. Medicine and surgery must have 
been subjects of great interest and attention, as we may infer from 
the establishment of an infirmary, west of the Shannon, to which 
Goll-Mac-Morne retired to be cured of the effects of the blow which 
he received from Luaidh-Laidir. A similar establishment existed at 
Carlow, to which Luaidh went for medical advice. Commerce must 
also have been an object of great importance, for among the conces- 
sions demanded of Fionn, when being on a visit to Teamor, he was 
treacherously seized, was the custom of all imported goods ; and one 
of the rewards promised by king Cormac to Goll Mac-Morne, for 
overcoming Dearg Mac-Dreithil, was one-third of the harbour profits. 
Ship-building and navigation were studied of course, and these imply 
the manufacture of canvas, and a knowledge of metallurgy and work- 
ing in iron. Nor were the heroes of the age strangers to magnifi- 
cence in their entertainments, nor to the " pomp, pride, and circum- 
stances of glorious war," for we read in their poems, of jewels and 
cups of gold ; of polished reins and golden shields. In the poem of 
"the Sixteen Men," their banners are described as composed of crim- 
son satin, variously and richly ornamented with emblematical blazonry. 

Ireland, from the earliest ages, was addicted to the study of 
music and poetry ; and at no period was she destitute of bards to 
celebrate the virtues of her kings and nobles. The deeds of the 
Fenian heroes were handed down in their strains from one generation 
to another, as the various tales of " Troy divine," among the poets of 



125 

Greece. But a Homer was wanting to make them his own, by recast- 
ing them in anew mould, and sending them from the mint of genius 
and taste, stamped with the image and superscription of the God of 
Song. As they passed from one age to another, they would neces- 
sarily undergo some alterations, and if any of them were of very 
ancient date, they must have been modernized in their language to 
render them intelligible ; for, as Mr. O'Reilly informs us, " Eochaid 
OTlin, a celebrated poet and historian, who died A. D. 984, wrote 
some poems which are still extant, accompanied with a copious gloss, 
without which they could not be understood." Subjects of antiquity are 
always grateful to eminent poets. The more remote the age, the more 
favourable to the excursions of imagination. Heroic deeds become 
more heroic and venerable from years, and the mind turns with 
delight to visions of past glory, as if she felt warmed and animated 
by their splendor. The Irish bards were never forgetful of the 
deeds of their fathers. We learn from the above mentioned autho- 
rity, that Cuan O'Lochain, " the most learned and celebrated anti- 
quary and historian of Ireland," in the beginning of the eleventh cen- 
tury, wrote a poem " on the splendor of the royal palace of Tarah, 
in the time of Cormac Mac- Art, monarch of Ireland, A. D. 250/' 
Flann Mainistreach, who flourished about the middle of the same 
century, wrote " on the deaths of the most remarkable of the Tuatha 
De-Danans, and the places where they died." Giolla na Naomh 
O'Dunn, about the middle of the succeeding century, wrote a poem 
of 128 verses, " giving an account of the chief tribes descended from 
the three Collas, sons of Cairbre LifFeachair, monarch of Ireland, 
who was killed at the battle of Gabhra, A. D. 296," in which battle 
Oscar, the son of Oisin, fell. After the English invasion, the bards 
found a subject of more immediate interest for the exercise of their 
art. Angus Roe O'Daly, who died in 1350, invoked O'Molloy, 



126 

the chief of Fearcall, " to spend his wrath upon the English, the 
plunderers of his country ;" and in 1380 Mahon O'Reilly, Lord of 
Clan Mahon, " was the author of a poem, in praise of the mighty 
actions of his son Thomas, who, in a short period, levelled eighteen 
castles belonging to the English of the Pale, and laid the country, from 
Drogheda to Dublin, under contribution. The poem begins, as trans- 
lated; The cry of an English sprite over Englishmen ." Another poem 
in a similar strain is attributed to this O'Reilly by some writers, and 
by others to his chief poet Maurice O'Daly, beginning " A cry of an 
English hag over Englishmen ; that is a cry that I lament not." 

But amidst all the distractions of a rent and bleeding land, the 
poems of the more celebrated Fileas were carefully preserved, in 
various volumes which obtained names from the compilers, or their 
proprietors, or the places where the compilations were made or depo- 
sited. Thus we have the books of Leacan, of Ballimote, of Howth, 
and of Glendaloch. 

The book of the O'Kellys, a valuable Irish manuscript, in the 
possession of Sir William Betham, contains, with a vast variety of 
miscellaneous matter, " several poems of our earliest and most 
esteemed Fileas. Some of these are authentic history, and others 
are mixed with fable. Of this latter description are the poems on the 
Knights of the Red Branch ; such as Cuchullin, Connal Cearnach, 
Curaidh Mac-Daire, Fergus Mac-Riogh ; and of the Fianna Eirionn, 
or famous Irish militia, commanded by Fionn Mac-Cubhail, the Fin- 
gal of Macpherson, such as Goll Mac-Moirne, Dermod O'Duibhne, 
Caoilte Mac-Ronan, Conan Maol, Oisin, the poet, Oscar, son of 
Oisin."* This book was transcribed by Faelan Mac-a-Gobhan, a 
learned historian, A. D. 1423. 

* See O'Reilly's Chronological Account, p. cxxiv. Sir William Betham would render 
a service to the cause of ancient Irish literature by having these poems translated. 



127 



SECTION VII. 

Fin Mac-Cumhal and Oisin were Natives of Ireland, not of Scotland. 

Sir John Sinclair having shewn, to his own satisfaction, that 
"various Gaelic poems existed in the Highlands and islands of 
Scotland, in remote periods of their history," proceeds in the third 
division of his dissertation, to shew that "those poems were said in a 
great measure to have been composed by Ossian, a Scottish bard, 
who celebrated the exploits of Fingal, a Scottish warrior." 

To prove this proposition, if possible, was indispensable to the 
proof of the authenticity of Ossian's poems. The task was attended 
with much difficulty ; but what will not the advocates of a favourite 
hypothesis attempt ? The greater the paradox, the greater the renown 
of establishing its truth. In vain had Ireland possessed an undis- 
puted claim to the warrior and the bard for 1500 years. In vain 
had her poets celebrated the actions of the one, and imitated the 
strains of the other. In vain had her historians handed down in 
written records, never to be effaced, the genealogy of both. In vain 
had they chronicled the age in which the son of Cumhal lived, the 
battles he fought, the monarch he served, the mode in which he 
died* All this was now to be set aside, and the popular traditions 
and the written annals of Ireland falsified, to make room for the fic- 
tions of Macpherson, who had metamorphosed the Irish general into 
a Caledonian king, and placed him on the throne of a kingdom 
which no muse of history has ever condescended to notice ! 

Sir John Sinclair endeavours to support his hypothesis, 1st, By 
the evidence of authors who never imagined that it would be a sub- 



128 

ject of disputation, or of any material consequence ; 2ndly, By the 
names of places in the Highlands, derived from Fingal and his 
heroes; 3rdly, By many proverbial expressions in the Highlands 
which tend to confirm the idea ; and 4thly, By the concurring tra- 
dition of the inhabitants of the Highlands. 

The first evidence adduced is Barbour, the oldest writer of Scot- 
land, who mentions Fingal in " The Bruce," composed in 1375 : 

He said " methink, Marthoky's son, 
Rycht as Gol-Mak-Morn was wone 
To haiff fra Fyngal his menye, 
Rycht sua all hys fra us has he." 

Bruce, buke iii. 67-70. 

This comparison was made by the Lord of Lorn, and is treated 
by Barbour with great scorn, as tending to lessen his hero Bruce; 
but, says Pinkerton, " Barbour had no prophetic view of Ossian, and 
little suspected that Scotland would, in the eighteenth century, 
produce a Geoffrey of Monmouth." There is nothing in the lines 
relative to the country of Fingal. The only thing remarkable in 
them, as to the present question, is his name, which Pinkerton 
observes, is unknown to the Irish. Gal, the latter part of the 
compound, signifies a stranger, and being applied by Scotchmen to 
Fin the son of Cumhal, it affords a decisive proof that they did not 
consider him as their countryman,* 

* "Fionn is not known in the Highlands," says Shaw, " by the name of Fingal. He is 
universally supposed to be an Irishman." When he asked of the Highlanders, who Fionn 
was, they answered ' an Irishman, if a man ;' for they sometimes thought him a giant ; and 
that he lived in Ireland, and sometimes came over to hunt in the Highlands. This is 
the universal voice of all the Highlanders, excepting those who are possessed of abilities and 



129 



The next proof is from Hector Boethius : 

" Some conjecture that in those times lived Finnanus, the son of Caelus, (in common 
language Fyn-Mak-Coul,) a man, as they report, of an incredible stature, for they describe him 
as being seven cubits in height ; he was of Scottish extraction, ( Scotici sanguinis,) remarkable for 
the art of hunting, and in other exercises, to be dreaded, on account of the unusual size of his 
body." 

This is an important quotation in this controversy. It lets us 
see clearly the true nature of the traditions preserved in Scotland 
respecting the Fenian chief. It demonstrates that he was not 
regarded as a star of chivalry, by whose light the youth of Caledo- 
nia might move to deeds of courtesy and feats of arms ; but a mighty 
Nimrod (Scotici sanguinis) of Irish blood, for this is the proper 
interpretation of the Latin phrase, as all antiquaries know,* who 
was wont to pursue the game of the Highland woods and mountains 
for his pastime, and whom the fears of the natives magnified into a 
giant whose enormous stature might vie with that of Otus and 
Ephialtes. 

The third proof from Bishop Leslie's History of Scotland corro- 
borates this fact : 

" It is the opinion of many, that one Finnanus, the son of Callus, (in our language 
called Fynmacoul,) a man of a huge size, and sprung as it were from the race of the ancient 
giants, at that time (namely in the reign of Eugenius II.) lived amongst us." 



knowledge to peruse the work of Macpherson, and are taught by nationality to support an 
idle controversy." — Shaw, p. 65. 

There is not a word of Fingal in the Chronicon Scotorum, from which the list of Scottish 
kings is taken. The other characters of Ossian are not at all known among the Highlanders. 
They never heard of Swaran. More of him anon. 

* " From the eleventh to the fifteenth century, Usher deduces the words of writers who 
have used Scotia and Scots for Hibemia and Hibernians, concluding, we have the suffrages 

s 



130 

Such testimonies as these prove more than the cause for which 
they are cited requires, and that the common traditional opinion, 
respecting Fin Mac-Cumhal, is hostile to that which is necessary to 
the Ossianic hypothesis. According to Buchanan, Eugenius II. 
died A. D. 452, more than a century and a half after the days of 
Fingal. 

A quotation is next given from Bishop Douglas's "Police of 
Honour" as not inconsistent with the idea, that Fingal and his 
heroes were of Scottish extraction : 

" Great Gow-Mac-Morne, and Fyn-Mac-Cowl, and how 
They suld be goddis in Ireland, as they say." 

The observation upon these words is extraordinary. " Those 
heroes might certainly be born in Scotland, though they might be 
accounted gods in Ireland !" It is possible, but by no means pro- 
bable. Barbarous nations are not in the habit of deifying any 
heroes but their own. But, " the general tenor of the quotation," 
Sir John Sinclair thinks, " seems to justify that explanation. (We 
should think the contrary.) That this was the bishop's meaning 
is the more probable, because in a poem written about the same 
period, namely, in the reign of James IV., called ' The Interlude of 
the Droichis, 3 Fyn Mac- Cowl is given to the Highlands :" 

" My fore grandsyr, hec-ht Fyn Mac-Cowl, 
That dang the devil and gart him yowll, 
The skyis rained when he wald scowll, 
And trublit all the air : 



of moderns carefully collected by D. Roth, Bishop of Ossory, an advocate for Ireland. But 
Ward, in the S - fe of Saint Rumold,* says, as follows, of the present age : " We are certainly 
called at this very day Scots in Germany, as I shall demonstrate elsewhere from the engraved 
epitaphs of the Irish, and from the printed books of Germans of the first literary abilities yet 
living."— Ogygia, vol. ii. p. 252. Dub. 1793. 

* Written in 1631. 



131 

He gat my grandschir Gog Magog ; 
Ay when he dansit the warld wald schog ; 
Five thousand ellis yeid in his frog, 
Of Hieland pladdis of hair."* 

Did the necessity of the argument require it, we might adopt 
Sir John's mode of reasoning, and affirm, that though Fyn Mac-Cowl 
was the father of the person who spoke these lines, and who, it is pre- 
sumed, was a Highlander, he might, notwithstanding, be an Irish- 
man ; and though his frog, or frock, was made of Hieland pladdis 
of hair, he might be an Irishman still. But, really, it is a waste of 
time to confute serious conclusions deduced from premises so ab- 
surdly ludicrous as those laid down by the worthy baronet. Again, 
he tells us, that in Lyndsay's Satyre of the three Estates, written in 
1538, among the relicts produced by the pardoner, was : 

" Ane relict lang and braid 
Of Fyn Mac-Cowl the richt chaft blaid 
With teeth and all togidder." 

As for the decision of the question, it might as well have been 
the jaw-bone of Balaam's ass. 

He also quotes from Colville's Whig Supplication, published 
1681, the following lines : 

" One man, quoth he, ofttimes had stood, 
And put to flight a multitude, 
Like Samson, Wallace, and Sir Bewis, 
And Fyn Mac-Cowl beside the Lewis" 

"Evidently," says Sir John, "ascribing Fingal to the Hebrides or 

* Aliter and mair. 

s2 



132 

Western Islands, in the number of which it is well known the Isle of 
Lewis is included." But why Lewis ? Evidently for the sake of 
rhyming with Sir Bewis. Had the third line runs thus, 

Like Samson, Wallace, and the Bruce, 

the next would have followed, 

And Fyn-Mac-Cowl beside Dunluce : 

with full as much propriety. But granting that Fyn, on account 
of some legend, were more properly spoken of in connexion with the 
Lewis, still this circumstance would no more determine his country, 
than the placing of Samson in connexion with Wallace, would de- 
monstrate the slayer of the Philistines to be a native of Scotland. 
Nelson of the Nile, was not an Egyptian ; nor was Wellington of 
Waterloo, born in the Netherlands. 

Sir John's next proof is taken from some lines addressed by Kirk, 
to his translation of the Psalms of David, published at Edinburgh in 
Gaelic, anno 1684. 

" Little volume go boldly forth, 
Raise whom you reach to pure and godly strains ; 
Hail the generous land of Fingal's heroes, 
The Highland tracts and isles of the Hebrides." 

These lines are given as the literal version of four lines in Gaelic. 
The two last lines in the original are these : 

" Cuir failte ar fonn fial nab fionn, 
Ar gharbh chriocha is Inseabh Gall." 



133 

Literally : 

" Put welcome upon the generous land of the Fionns, 
Upon the rough territories, and the Inch-galls," (viz. Hebrides.) 

In " the generous land of Fingal's heroes," every unprejudiced 
mind will instantly recognize Ireland, in which country the author 
must have felt a natural wish for his book to become popular. That 
this was his meaning, might be reasonably concluded from the cha- 
racteristic manner in which it is described ; but the repetition of the 
preposition ar upon, if we mistake not, is decisive. Had the gene- 
rous land of Fingal's heroes, and the rough territories of the High- 
lands, been the same, would not the insertion of ar between them 
have been not only superfluous, but destructive of their intended 
identity ? 

To the Scottish authorities in favour of his hypothesis, Sir John 
adds that of Colgan, an Irish author of great learning and research ; 
for Colgan, in a note, says of Fingal, (or Finnius, filius Cubhalli,) 
that he was much celebrated in poems and tales inter suos, "by which 
he must necessarily mean that he belonged to Scotland, and not to 
Ireland, as in this case he would have written inter nostrates" 
Pro-di-gi-ous ! A common reader would suppose that by suos, his 
own, the author meant Finn's own people, his contemporaries; mililes 
or amicos, being the substantive understood, and that he had no in- 
tention whatever to designate him as a foreigner. If he were so, 
why introduce him at all rather than Galgacus, or any other stran- 
ger? What should we think of the critic, who would attempt to prove 
that our Saviour was not a native of Judea, because the apostle John 
has written, that "he came to his own, and his own (01 \dioi) received 
him not?" According to our learned critic's rule, had John been 
able to claim Christ as his compatriot, he would have written, not 
bi \Sioi but rif-iedarroi ! 



134 

This topic has been dwelt on at much greater length than it 
merits. But as it is of some importance in the controversy, it was 
judged proper to shew on what flimsy grounds the advocates of Mac- 
pherson's Ossian are contented to rest their belief, and how the very 
arguments they employ to support, only subvert their cause. In not 
one of the passages quoted by Sir John Sinclair, is Fin Mac-Cumhal 
distinctly stated to be a native of Caledonia; and as for Ossian, he is 
not mentioned at all. A more abortive attempt to uphold a baseless 
fabric, is not to be found in the annals of literature. 

Having marshalled his historical proof, Sir John has recourse to 
tradition. He states that — 

" All over the Highlands, the names of Ossian, Fingal, Comhal, Trenmor, Cuchullin, 
and the other heroes, are still familiar, and held in the greatest respect. Straths or valleys, 
mountains, rocks, rivers, are named after them. There are a hundred places in the Highlands 
and isles which derive their names from the Feinne, and from circumstances connected with 
their history." 

Granting all this, what does it prove, when it can be shewn, on un- 
deniable authority, that there are as many places in Ireland of which 
the same may be predicated ? Where is the spot, from Fin Mae- 
Cumhal's quoit at the hill of Howth, to Cuchullin's leap, (Loop- 
head,) at the mouth of the Shannon, and thence to Luirgeadan, and 
the beautiful vale of GlenarrifF, in the County of Antrim, that is not 
familiar with such appellations ?* Their frequency in Scotland only 



* We have the great rock in the County of Meath, under the shelter of which Fin and 
his faithful wolf-dog Bran once rested, after a fatiguing pursuit ;f and on the top of the hill 
of Shanthamon, in the County of Cavan, may be seen his "Fingers," in the shape of five 
enormous stones, each about five feet high, and of four tons weight.! 

■f Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xv. Antiq. p. 167. 

% Id. vol. xiii. Antiq. p. 127. 



135 

argues the frequency of the Irish invasions of that country, and the 
success that attended them. It has been stated that the celebrated 
cave in the island of Staffa derives its name from the son of Cumhal. 
Even if it did, it would only be a record of the extent of the Irish 
warrior's fame. But this cave derives its name, as probably at least, 
from a natural cause. All tourists by whom it is visited, are pleas- 
ingly surprised to hear the musical echo produced by the percussion 
of the waves at its extremity, and hence* it has been denominated 
in the Gaelic tongue, Uagh-na-bhi?ie, the musical grotto, corrupted 
into Uagh-na-Fin, to favour Macpherson's fictions. 

Before the days of Macpherson, the claims of Ireland to Fin 
Mac-Cumhal, to Oisin, and the Fenian heroes, were never disputed, 
more than the claims of Greece to Achilles and Homer. The bards 
and historians of Ireland had recorded the genealogy of her hero, 
the names of his sons and daughters, his dog, his standard, and the 
fabricator of his arms, the king whom he served, the civil strife in 
which he was engaged. She could point to the scenes of his exploits; 
to the palace of Almhuin, in Leinster, where he dwelt; to the banks 
of the Boyne, where he fell ; to the top of Slieve Gullen, where he is 
said to be entombed. She could repeat numerous tales of the 
achievements of his heroes ; and no farther proof is wanting to shew 
the undisputed justice of her claims, than the impotent efforts of 
Sir John Sinclair to set up an opposite claim for Scotland, founded 
on false inferences, drawn from ludicrous rhymes and extravagant 
fictions of a comparatively modern date. The most ancient records 
he has been able to produce, are those of Barbour and Boethius,*-)- 

* Pinkerton, in his Geography, ascribes the name either to this circumstance, or to the 
harmonious arrangement of the columns. 

f "Antiquissima quae deFinno extant Scotorum Albiensium testimonium, Sseculum, xivtum 



136 

and they prove nothing on the subject, except that the name of Fio 
Mac-Cumhal was not to them altogether unknown. But Ireland 
goes to higher sources ; and she has the steady beacon light of chro- 
nology and history to guide her. She has written annals to which 
she appeals, handed down in various transcripts from generation to 
generation ; and almost all writers who have treated of her history and 
antiquities, notice the fondness of her natives for music and poetry, 
her bards and senachies, her fictions, romances, and superstitions, 
as connected with the names of Fionn and Oisin. Camden says of 
the Irish, "they suppose the soules of such as are deceased, goe into 
the company of certaine men, famous in those places, touching 
whom they reteine still fables and songs, as of giantes, Fyn Mac- 
Huyle, Osker Mac-Oshin ; and they say, that by illusion they often- 
times doe see such."* And again, their " potentates also have their 
historians about them, who write downe their acts and deeds ; they 
have their phisitians also, and Ryrners whom they call bards, yea, 
and their harpers, who have every one of them their severall livelods 
and lands set out for them ; and of these there be in each territorie 
severall professours, and those liable to some certaine and severall 
families. "-f- Thus Campion also, in his History, published in Dublin, 
1633, says of the Irish, " greedy of praise they bee, and fearefull of 
dishonour, and to this end they esteeme their poets who write 
Irish learnedly, and penne their sonnetts heroical, for the which they 
are bountifully rewarded. But if they send out libells in dis- 
prayse, thereof the gentlemen, especially the meere Irish, stand in 
great awe." — p. 14. 

non excedunt, Barbourii nempe, et Boethii. — Vide Report of the Committee of the High- 
land Society, p. 21." — O'Conor, Ilib. Script. 

* Camden's Ireland, p. 147, Lond. 1810. f Id. Ireland, p. 141. 



137 

The following extract from an old MS. history of Ireland,* rela- 
tive to Fin Mac-Cumhal and his strife with the Clanna-Morna, may 
be satisfactory to the reader : 

" Cairbre Lithfeachair, the son of King Corbmac, obtained the crowne, and was nick- 
named Lithfeachair, because he was fostered near the river Liffey in Leinster, in which place 
he tooke great delight : this monarch was killed in the battle of Gabhra, which was fought 
upon this occasion. 

"There were two septs of the Fions of Ireland, the Clanna-Morna, and the Clanna 
Boisgne. This Boisgne was father to Cumhall, who was Fion's father, (commonly called 
Fion Mac-Cumhall.) Fion had a son and daughter. The daughter was called Samhair, and 
was married to Corbmac Cais, king of Munster, by whom he had three sons, Tine, Conla, 
and Mogha Cuirb. This Mogha Cuirb was king of Munster in the raign of this monarch 
Cairbre. Fion Mac-Cumhall's son was called Oisin, and was head of the Clanna Boisgne, 
who fallinge at difference with the Clanna Morna, was protected and assisted by Mogha 
Cuirb, his sister's husband. The Clanna-Morna, who were then the monarch's mercionary 
souldiers, were headed by Aodh Caomh, son of Garadh Glundubh, son of Morna, assisted 
and backed by the monarch Cairbre ; soe that this civill warr continued betweene the Fions 
for seven years ; and at length the Clanna-Morna provoked the monarch and the other princes 
of Ireland to warr upon Mogha Cuirb, king of Munster, because he protected the Clanna 
Boisgne, hoping by that meanes that they should be deserted by the king of Munster, and so 
be utterly expelled the kingdom, which the monarch did, (although that Oisin was his owne 
daughter's son.) But the king of Munster stuck faithfully to the Clanna Boisgne, where- 
upon ensued the battaile of Gabhra, wherein the monarch Cairbre was slain after he had 
raigned twenty-seven years." 

O'Flaherty in his Ogygia, speaking of Cormac, the 126th monarch 
of Ireland, says : 

"He had a son-in-law Fin married to his daughter Grania,f but as she eloped with 
Diermoit O'Duibhne, he had his other daughter, Albea, married to him, who was the son of 



* This history is in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. 

f This Grania is changed by Macpherson into the more mellifluous sound Ros-crana. 
Thus unblushingly does he alter names as he utters forgeries, which he presents to his rea- 

T 



138 

Cuball, by Mornia, daughter to the Druid Thady, of the family of O'Baisgne, the descendants 
of Nuad the White, monarch of Ireland ; he was generalissimo of the Irish militia, highly 
distinguished for his jurisprudence, dissertations on which, written by him, are extant ; for his 
poetical compositions in his native language, and as some write, for his prophecies : he has, 
on account of his noble military exploits, afforded a vast field of panegyric and encomium 
to the poets.''* 

The same annalist gives a detail of the grounds of dispute be- 
tween the rival clans of Boisgne and Morna, in the reign of Carbry 
Liffechar, and states that — 

" In the heat of the battle (of Gabhra,) Carbry and Osgar, the grandson of Finn, by 
Ossin, came to single combat. The king, all covered with wounds, slew his antagonist, but 
he was killed dealing death around him with undaunted bravery, by Simeon, the son of 
Kirb> of the race of the Fotharts."f 

These are facts of which Macpherson could not be ignorant. 
Neither could it be unknown to him that part of Argyleshire was 
colonized by the Irish under Cairbre Riada,^ that they took posses- 



ders for true history. — See the first note to the eighth book of Temora. Quis tarn ferreus 
ut teneat seP 

Our celebrated Irish beauty Deirdre, he has also metamorphosed into Darthula. 

" In the first publication of poems from the Erse, he calls his bard Oscian, and in the 
latter translations, Ossian. This shews his little knowledge of the Gaelic, or Scottish lan- 
guage. Oisin is the true reading, and so written in all our ancient manuscripts." — 0'Conoi J s 
Dissertations. 

* Ogygia, vol. ii. p. 242. Dublin, 1793. + Id. p. 246. 

J " The Dalriedinians almost three hundred years after this Carbry, their progenitor, 
being headed by generals of the same family, the sons of Eric, who was the son of Achy 
Munreamhar, set sail from Balrieda in Britain, to the north of the bay of Dunbritton, 
contiguous to the boundaries of the ulterior Roman province, comprehending Kentire, Knap- 
dal, Lorna, Argyle, and Brun-alban, (or Braid-alban,) with the neighbouring islands. The 
most eminent and distinguished of the sons of Eric, were the posterity of Fergus, who 
founded a Scottish monarchy, from whom the most illustrious kings of Great Britain and 
Ireland are descended. — Ogygia, ii. 221. 



139 

sion of it either by treaty or conquest, "amicitia autferro" and gave 
it their name, their language, and their laws. The venerable Bede 
accords with all our ancient Irish historians, in attesting the reality 
of the Dalriadian settlement, which, it might be presumed, if facts 
were wanting to prove it, kept up a constant intercourse with the 
mother country. Hill, in his Collection of ancient Erse Poems, says 
truly, " if we may reason from a part to the whole, it is just to con- 
clude that all the songs preserved in the Highlands relative to the 
Fingallians are Irish. They are wholly confined to the western 
coast of the Highlands opposite Ireland, and the very traditions of 
the country themselves acknowledge the Fingallians to be origi- 
nally Irish." 

Pinkerton in his Essay on the Origin of Scottish Poetry, agrees 
with Hill. " I take Fingal and his heroes," says he, " to have been 
the leaders of the Scots from Ireland, as Odin and his heroes led the 
Goths from Asia. This opinion is confirmed by the whole tradi- 
tional poems in the Highlands, which, however stated by Mr. Mac- 
pherson, always represent Fingal as contemporary with Saint Patrick, 
who flourished about 430." (p. xli.) 

Hume is of the same opinion. He observes that " the name of 
Erse, or Irish, given by the low country Scots to the language of the 
Scottish Highlanders, is a certain proof of the traditional opinion, 
delivered from father to son, that the latter people came originally 
from Ireland." " To this," continues Pinkerton, " it may be added, 
that the old Scottish poets and writers uniformly call the Highlan- 
ders, Irish." 

The argument then which Sir John Sinclair would found on the 
concurring traditions of the inhabitants of the country, recoils against 
himself, and lays his hypothesis prostrate. The traditions of Scotland 
are corroborated by those of Ireland and her bards, her musicians, 

T 2 



140 

historians, critics, antiquaries, and whole legions of literati; traditions, 
not left floating in the breath of the vulgar, but transmitted by writ- 
ten parchment documents from one age to another, and incorporated 
with the history of her kings and legislators. 

From the proverbs connected with the name of Fin Mac-Cumhal 
and his heroes, nothing can be argued in favour of Sir John's theory, 
unless it can be shewn that they are peculiar to the Highlands, and 
not of foreign extraction. The fame of illustrious men travels far, 
and it had been strange, indeed, if that of the Fenian heroes, even 
though they had never formed a settlement in Scotland, had not 
been resounded in her valleys and mountains, and rendered familiar 
to women and children. 

Their chief was like 

"The Talbot, so much famed abroad, 
That with his name the mothers stilled their babes." 

But the proverbial sayings which Sir John would fondly array in 
his cause, are not indigenous to Scotland. They are all completely 
Irish, and only afford a proof of the stability and long duration of 
the' Irish dominion, language, and customs, in the Highlands. The 
justice of Scotland's claims to Fingal and his Fenians, is not demon- 
strated by " the Clan Campbell tracing their descent from those 
heroes." For Irish genealogists derive that family from a higher 
source, and shew that the Campbells of Argyle may boast of Lugady, 
father of Tea or Thais, the wife of Heremon, as one of their progeni- 
tors.* In farther corroboration of his opinions, Sir John states that 

* See Ogygia Vindicated, p. li. Fothad Connan, (says O'Flaherty, Ogygia, ii. p. 230,) 
the son of king Mac-con, has been the original founder of the Campbells, (in Irish, Mac- 
Cathlin,) earls of Argyle in Scotland. 



141 

" Cuchullin was the chief of Dunscaich, in the island of Sky." 
According to the worthy baronet's style of argument, we might 
reply; certainly he might be a chief of Dunscaich, and at the same 
time a native of Ireland. But Cuchullin was altogether Hibernian, 
and allied to his country by ties too many and too strong to be disse- 
vered by the critical knife of Sir John Sinclair, or Macpherson. His 
genealogy and family connexions may be seen at length in the second 
volume of Ogygia, p. 162, and much ol his romantic history in Keat- 
ing. " He fell by the sword of the sons of Calkin," in the twenty- 
seventh year of his age, and the second of the Christian era, more 
than two hundred years before the days of Fin Mac-Cumhal, with 
whom Macpherson makes him contemporary ! 

Farther it is alleged, that " Fergus, and not Ossian, was, accord- 
ing to Irish tradition, the chief bard of the Irish Fingal, though his 
works are hardly known in Scotland ; and that the poems attributed 
to the Irish Ossian, were composed between the eighth and twelfth 
centuries, whereas the poems of (the Scotch) Ossian, are ascribed 
by their traditions to some of the most remote periods of which there 
is any account in the history of Scotland." 

They might as well be ascribed to years beyond the flood. What 
avails the ascription of them to any period of profound darkness? 
We want light and proof. It is notorious that they are not men- 
tioned in any Scotch history a hundred years old. Admitting that 
Fergus was the chief bard of Fingal, what advantage is gained by the 
admission ? There were hundreds of bards in Erin, some of whom 
may have contested the palm with Oisin, as Hesiod is said to have 
contested it with Homer. But the name of Oisin is unquestionably 
the most celebrated, as is apparent from his being represented as the 
narrator of all the exploits of the Fenian heroes, in dialogues with 
Saint Patrick. Sir John observes that the latter name " is introduced 



142 

into the Irish poems, never in the Scotch." A proof, we reply, of 
the diligent care with which it has been excluded, lest its presence 
should betray a principal source of Macpherson's centos. 

Ample amends, however, have been made for the exclusion of 
one name, by the introduction of several, which are found no where else, 
such as Swaran, Acandecca, and Fainasollis. These names Sir John 
thinks, " clearly indicate that the poems (the Irish and the Scotch) 
were originally different." They indicate more clearly that Mac- 
pherson knew the value of sweet-sounding, romantic names, and that 
he had ingenuity to compound them from Irish roots, and modulate 
them to please an English ear. As for the personages whom they 
were intended to represent, they never had any existence but in his 
own imagination. 

Note. — "The name of Fingal was never given to Fin by the Irish or by the Highlan- 
ders. It was applied to him only by the Lowland Scots, and perhaps means Fin-gael, or 
Fin the Irishman by eminence. That Fingal was the same person with the Irish Fin Mac- 
Cuwal (Cumhail) is clear from the identic names of the father Cuvval, the son Oisin, the 
grandson Oskir, (Osgar,) and from the old Scottish poets who sometimes call his person Fin- 
gal, sometimes Fin Mac-Coul. The names of his companions, Gaul son of Morni, &c, also 
coincide both in Irish and Highland tradition, so that the identity of Fin Mac-Cuwal and 
Fingal is demonstration. His formation of a regular standing army called Fianna Eirionn, 
or the Phenians of Ireland, trained to war, in which all Irish accounts agree, must have been 
a rude imitation of the Roman legions in Britain. Buchanan gives an account of the Feans, 
or legions of Fin, and speaks of rude rhymes on the actions of Fin Mac-Coel, as retained 
by the Irish and Scottish Highlanders. The idea, though simple enough, shews prudence, 
for such a force alone could have coped with the Romans had they invaded Ireland." — 
Buchanan's Account of the family of Buchanan, Edinburgh, 1723, 4to. Pinkerton's Scot. 
vol. ii. part iv. c. 2. quoted from a note to the "Annates iv. Magistrorum," by Doctor 
O'Conor, p. 89. 



143 



SECTION VIII. 

On the Topography of Ossian's Poems. 

Critics and antiquaries have found much pleasure in investi- 
gating the topography of Troy and the scenes of Homer's battles. 
Why should not Sir John Sinclair and his Highland friends find 
similar pleasure in investigating and describing the scenes where 
Fingal fought and Ossian sang ? The former, indeed, had certain 
geographical guides to direct them ; well-known headlands, the 
isle of Tenedos, the river Simois, and the Hellespont. If such guides 
be wanting to Ossian, the greater must be the topographical inge- 
nuity which can discover and describe his scenery without them. 

Mr. Alexander Stewart, A. M., has favoured Sir John Sinclair, 
and, through him, the public, with a brief description of Selma : 

" In which he says, there is reason to believe that Selma, the principal residence of 
Fingal, is that part of Argyleshire, call Upper Lorn, now called by the inhabitants Dun-Mhic- 
Siiitheachain, i. e. the fort of the son of Snitho, but by some of our historians Berigonhim,* 
and by them said to have been once the capitol of the kingdom of the Gaels or Caledonians. 
On the top of this hill are still to be seen vestiges of extensive buildings, with fragments of 
the walls, bearing evident marks of fire, scattered along the sides of the hill." 

He then quotes some passages from Doctor Smith's ancient 
poems, descriptive, as he imagines, of the scenery : 

" The chase had ceased and the deer slept 
Under the shadow of trees on the moss; 



* Berogomum. Camden. 



144 

The curtain of night descended on the hills, 
And heroes were feasting in Selma. 

There was song after song, as the custom was, 
There was that and the music of harps, 
With the barking of dogs in the interval of action, 
From the rock which rises over the white beach." 

The white beach in the last line 

'.' Answers exactly the present aspect of the white sand which covers the shore around 
part of the hill on which Selma stood. The rock from which the dogs were heard to bark is 
here also, for that part of the hill washed by the waves, is composed of rock, and rises almost 
perpendicular to the sea. But if this be not the rock alluded to in the poem, there is another 
roek within a few hundred yards of Selma, to which the description is equally applicable." 

And to what is the modern theatrical image of the curtain of 
night descending, applicable ? By what proleptic vision did the old 
blind bard discover that idea ? Was he enabled in the fury of pro- 
phetic inspiration to peep through Shakespeare's " blanket of the 
dark," and anticipate the moderns in the use even of their own pro- 
perty ? The rock and the sandy beach in regions abounding with 
islands and gulfs, are no doubt very characteristic ! The description 
would apply to the hill of Howth, or to Ireland's Eye, and the fine 
shelly strand of Portmarnock ; or if these be not the scenes alluded 
to, there is another rock at Cairnalloch, or Red-bay, or Portrush, or 
Magilligan ! 

The learned topographer having thus distinctly pointed out the 
rock and the sandy beach, leads us to the ruins of the royal palace : 

" In Selma, or Taura, or Temora, 
There is no shell, nor song, nor harp ! 
They are all become green mounds, 
And their stones half sunk in their own meadows." 



145 

" The description," he says, " given of Selma after its fall, in the 
third and fourth lines of this passage, corresponds exactly to the pre- 
sent appearance of the ruins of the place/' The just inference from 
which observation is, that the description was recently made. Had it 
been made on the place, and at the time when Selma was burned, 
the ruins would not have been green mounds, nor the stones half 
sunk in their own meadows. 

Other quotations are made to shew that Selma, or Taura, or 
Temorah, for Taura, he supposes, is but another name for Selma, 
was near the shore on an eminence, and commanded a prospect of 
the sea: just such a situation, we presume, as Horace would have 
selected for his country residence ; 

" Illic vivere vellem 
Oblitus meorum, oblivescendus et illis ; 
Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem." 

Or where Lucretius might have stood, while he sang : 

" Suave, mari magno turbantibus sequora ventis, &c." 

Such are the very discriminating circumstances by which we are 
to discover the royal habitation of the king of Morven ! Selma is a 
word of liquid cadence, and shews the musical ear of its inventor. It 
seems to have been suggested by the Irish Almhuin, the real name of 
Fin Mac-Cumhal's abode, if it be not rather an anagram of the 
Hebrew Salem. Tarah is a well-known and oft-repeated name in 
Irish history and poetry. -The corruption of its orthography to Taura, 
is too impotent a device to transfer its site to the wilds of Caledonia. 
To achieve this would require the aid of a more powerful wizard 

u 



146 

than Macpherson, with all his host; such a Merlin redivivus as 
transported " the giants' dance" the rocks of Stonehenge from the 
Curragh of Kildare to the plain of Salisbury. 

Arda also is mentioned in Smith's collection, and the chorogra- 
pher on whom we are commenting, supposes it to be the same as 
Ardach, 

" a place well known at this day, which lies about half way between Stirling and Crief, 
and where are vestiges of one of the greatest Roman camps to be seen in Scotland. That the 
Romans were enemies whom the Fingallians completely defeated, and dispersed at Arda, 
appears evident from part of the same poem being the song of triumph which the maids of 
Morven sang, when they came forth to congratulate their heroes on their return." 

This passage reminds us of the daughter of Jephthah coming out 
with timbrels and dances, to hail her father's return ; and of the 
women of Israel chanting the triumph of David. But in what his- 
torian is this complete defeat of the Romans by the Fingallians men- 
tioned ? The Romans were not in the habit, more than the modern 
Britons,* of concealing their defeats, or the names of their enemies. 
Under whose reign did it happen ? How many Roman eagles were 
lost ? In what hall or temple were they deposited ? And why did 
the victors return to the " rock and the white beach," and not follow 
up their " complete " victory by the total expulsion of their enemies 
from the island ? for it will scarcely be maintained that the battle of 
Ardach, if ever there was such a battle, extinguished the Roman 
power in Britain. Verily, we shall again require the aid of Merlin 
to solve these questions. 

Doctor Graham is willing to give up Macpherson here. " Of 
his dreams," he says, " he makes no account." He rejects the 

* Voltaire observes that the English never conceal the number of their slain in battle. 



147 

connexion of his poems with the Roman history, and the fiction of 
his wars with Caracalla and Carausius; but maintains that conflicts be- 
tween the Romans and Caledonians were common; though, at this dis- 
tance of time, we cannot tell who was the hero "of the furious eye," 
or " Caros king of ships." The word Roman, he remarks, occurs 
not, because Ossian denominates individuals from their personal qua- 
lities ; and countries, mountains, and rivers, by appellations deduced 
from " the circumstances by which they are peculiarly distin- 
guished." 

It was prudent at least, in Macpherson, to deal in general descrip- 
tion, and to designate heroes, not by real names, but by such loose 
epithets and adjuncts, that if they did not apply to one, they might 
easily be transferred to another. The mention of Caracalla was 
unfortunate. It shot a beam of light through the Highland mist 
in which he wrapt himself, and exposed him to the critical shaft of 
Gibbon. It might have excited the wonder of a less acute judge, 
" that the son of Severus, who, in the Caledonian war, was known 
only by the name of Antoninus, should be described in these poems 
by a nickname invented four years afterwards, and scarcely used by 
the Romans, till after the death of the emperor." Macpherson was 
ignorant of this fact, or, we may rest satisfied, we should never have 
heard of the name of Caracalla in connexion with the poems of 
Ossian. 

But though Doctor Graham gives up Caracalla, he will not so 
easily part with Lochlin. He observes that Laing, " with his usual 
gratuitousness of assumption, affirms that the name was unknown till 
the ninth century." This he endeavours to disprove by a manu- 
script which Astle thought was written in the ninth or tenth, and 
which appears to have been composed between the fifth and eighth; 
and by the authority of Doctor Smith, who quotes a Welsh manu- 

v 2 



148 

script of the seventh century, in which we read that "the warlike 
Irp conducted a fleet to Llychlyn ; on which Mr. Edward Llhuyd 
remarks, that by this name we understand Sweden, Denmark, and 
Norway." We think, with due respect to Doctor Graham, that Mr. 
Laing does not indulge in gratuitous assumptions, but generally 
assigns such reasons for his opinions as are more easily contradicted 
than refuted. But another critic who has investigated the subject 
more profoundly than either Mr. Laing or the Doctor, one to whom 
all others must yield the palm, Doctor O'Conor, author of " Rerurn 
Hibernicarum Scriptores" one to whom all the stores of Celtic lite- 
rature are laid open, and who treasured in his mind all its various 
lore, is of the same opinion as Mr. Laing : 

"Nomen Lochlan,* quod in iisdem carminibus fictis centies pro Danis ponitur, penitus 
ignotum fuit, et inauditum ante saeculum christianum, quo tempore, Danis ab Hiberniae incolis 
impositum fuit, quia in lacubus Eachense, Ribhense, Feabhalinse, Orbsenense, fyc. hiemare sole- 
bant, ut eo commodius Mediterraneas insulae regiones et monasteria infestarent. Pro canone enim 
irrefragab Hi statuendum est, nullum esse, non modo codicem, verum etiam carmen, aut opus 
quodcunque, in quo vox Lochlan pro Dano, vel Norwegio ponitur, quod non sit saeculo 
decimo recentior, cum antea nullo alio vocabulo quam Gal, ullo unquam tempore, Hiber- 
nice designati fuerint." — Hib. Script. Ep. Nun. p. cxxii. 

Another mark of the true scenery of Ossian is found by Mr. 
Stewart in "a great cataract, or waterfall, about two short miles 
south of Selma, a short space above the ferry of Connuil, where 
Loch Eite discharges itself into the sea. This fall answers so well to 
the description of the Eas Laoire of Ossian, and Macpherson's Lora, 



* " Vox Lochlan proprie," Lacuum Incolas, " significat, et a saeculo nono in usu erat ad 
indicandos Norwegos et Danos qui Hiberniae lacus abinde infestabant. Utrum antea in usu 
fuerit ad indicandos Piratas Saxonicos ignoro. Danorum nomen ignotum fuit in Europa 
ante ann. 570. Hiberniam primum agressi sunt anno serae com. 807, non. 832, ut scribit 
Flahertus." — O'Conor, Tigher. ann. p. 24, note. 



149 

that it will be in vain to look for it any where else." But notwith- 
standing this positive assertion, he differs from Macpherson three 
pages after, and affirms, that the latter must be mistaken in making 
Lora to be a small stream, as he describes it to be, in a note to the 
fifth book of Temora. He concludes that "those who endeavour to 
fix the origin of Ossian to any modern period, or ascribe the original 
merit to any modern bard, can do it from no other reason than pre- 
judice or ignorance." 

As this censure falls on a very numerous class, in which we include 
ourselves, we may be allowed to express a wish that the learned 
topographer had taken some more efficient mode of eradicating our 
prejudice and instructing our ignorance, as we profess a willingness 
to be informed. Since he describes the scenery of Selma so minutely, 
by what unaccountable oversight has he forgotten to notice " Stru- 
mon, stream of the hill, the name of the seat of the family of Gaul, 
in the neighbourhood of Selma?" " Gordon, to favour a foolish 
hypothesis, about Agricola's camp, asserted that the people of the 
country call the spot Galgachan, to this day, which proved to be 
an absolute falsehood."* Until we receive more satisfactory proof 
than Mr. Stewart has laid before us, we shall adhere to our prejudice 
and ignorance in believing with Shaw, that " no such kingdom as 
Morven was ever known in the west of Scotland. The name of 
Morven, although at home it is called Morairna, sounded well, and 
for no other reason suited the author's plan, though it is never once 
mentioned in any of their tales or songs. The district known at this 
day by that name is only a part of the parish of that name. Selma 
is not at all known in Scotland."'!' 



* Pinkerton's Essay on the Origin of Scotch Poetry, p. xxix. 
f Shaw's Inquiry, p. 63. 



150 

From the silence of Buchanan we are led to the same conclusion . 
He says not a word of the kingdom of Morven, or the Palace of Selma, 
of Fingal or Ossian, whereas he would have assigned them a conspi- 
cuous place in his history, had he ever heard of them in connexion 
with his country. The tales which have been invented respecting 
them would have been exactly adapted to his taste. For, as Robert- 
son the historian testifies, " instead of rejecting the improbable tales 
of chronicle writers, he was at the utmost pains to adorn them, and 
hath clothed with all the beauties and graces of fiction, those legends 
which had formerly only its wildness and extravagance." Moreover 
he was led to the subject so directly, that there was scarcely a possi- 
bility of avoiding it, had it not been a nonentity. He gives a minute 
enumeration and description of the Hebrides. He notices hundreds 
of the small islands. Even Stafifa, though in his days no object of 
curiosity, does not escape his observation ; but he drops not a hint of 
the renowned kingdom of the woody echoing Morven. He speaks 
of the manners and customs of the inhabitants, and says, " they sing 
songs not inelegant, containing commonly the eulogies of valiant 
men, and the bards usually treat of no other argument. Instead of 
a trumpet they use a bagpipe. They are much given to music, but 
on instruments of a peculiar kind, called clarsachs." Of Ossian there 
is no notice. 

Erin is very frequently mentioned in Macpherson's Ossian, and 
made the scene of the poem of Temora. In the fourth book of this 
poem, Fingal says, that having left Selma, on the following morning, 
" Erin rose in mist. We came into the bay of Moilena, where its 
blue waters tumbled in the bosom of echoing woods."* In vain have 

* Again we are told in Temora, book vii., that " Culbin's Bay received the ship in the 
bosom of echoing woods." 



151 

we consulted maps and other sources of geographical information for 
this bay. As mountains and headlands, friths, rivers, and bays, are 
the last places which change their names, even amidst all the revo- 
lutions of years, the conquests of the sword, and the changes of lan- 
guage ; how has Moilena had the misfortune to lose its name in a 
country which still retains its original tongue ?* We can recognize 
the old district of Reuda (Dal-Riada) in the modern name of 
Route, in the County of Antrim ; and Macpherson's Innistore in 
Tory Island, which he has been pleased to transfer to the Orkneys, 
and his Innishuna in our own Innishowen, which he would dissever 
from its native land, and transport to " that part of south Britain 
which is over against the Irish coast!" But as for the bay of Moilena, 
we verily believe it is to be found no where but in the terra incog- 
nita of his own imagination. Walker, in his History of the Irish 
Bards, (p. 40,) says, that in the County of Donegal, there is a cloud- 
cap t mountain, called Alt Ossoi?i, around which, according to a 
learned writer, is the whole scenery so finely described by Macpher- 
son in his Oisin's Poems ; and to the northward of Lough Derg, are 
the mountains, caverns, and lakes of Fin." Another author says, 
that " the traveller, when he finds himself in the vale of Glenariff, 



* Moylena, a plain in Ferakelly, in the King's County, was the scene of a famous 
pitched battle between Conn of the Hundred Battles and Eugenius Mognuad the Great, of 
the Hiberian line, king of Munster, in which the latter was defeated and slain. He fell by 
the hand of Goll, the son of Morna, of the race of Saub, king of Connaught. " There are 
yet to be seen at this place two hills, in one of which, we are informed, the body of Eugenius 
was interred, and the corps of Frack the Spaniard, who was also slain there, was entombed 
in the other."f The celebrated Irish champion, Goll Mac-Morna, is metamorphosed by 
Macpherson into Gaul, " Fingal's best friend and greatest hero," and, by way of compen- 
sation; we suppose, for being robbed of his country, and made a Caledonian, compared to 
the Grecian Ajax.I 

t Ogygia, part iii. c. lx, t Note at the conclusion of the third book of Fingal. 



152 

on the coast of Antrim, may conceive that he beholds the scenery of 
the genuine Ossian. We recollect to have seen, many years ago, an 
old gentleman in the County of Antrim, who fancied he had disco- 
vered the whole topography in the neighbourhood of the Six Mile 
Water ; and in a recent work by Hugh Y. Campbell, Esq. R. N. 
F. A. S., it is laid down and described as lying on the western 
shores of the bay of Carrickfergus, and about the mountains of Carn- 
money and Cavehill. Why has not the County of Wicklow put in 
its claim ? Macpherson's descriptions will apply to it as well as to 
Morven. It has mountains and valleys ; whistling heath and blue 
streams; grey rocks and a sandy beach, with curling mists and rain- 
bow skies. 

" In truth," says the learned author of " Dissertations on the 
History of Ireland," " there would be no end of pointing out the 
topographical ignorance of Ossian, in omitting as well as misplacing 
some of the most noted places of Ireland, which must naturally come 
within the plan of his poems ; his invention, however, is very pro- 
lific ; and is particularly so where poetry wants it least, or is dis- 
graced by it. Instead of Eamhain, or Eamania, the celebrated seat 
of the kings of Ulster, which Ossian never once mentions, we have 
the castle of Tura, many ages before a single castle was built in the 
kingdom : and instead of Craove-roe, the academy near Eamania, for 
teaching the use of arms ; he gives us Muri's Hall, a name as little 
known to all ancient writers as Tura itself. From numberless instan- 
ces of such forgeries, omissions, and misplacings, the reader will be 
enabled to form a proper judgment of Ossian, as w r ell as Ossian's 
translator." 



153 



SECTION IX. 

On the Era of Ossian. 

The era of the real Fin Mac-Cumhal, and his son Oisin, is as 
distinctly marked in Irish history as any other event which it records. 
It appears evident from the chronological researches of Doctor Char- 
les O' Conor, that the former fell in the year of our Lord 273, and 
that Oscar, his grandson, fell ten years afterwards, viz. in 283, at 
the battle of Gavra. Hence it will appear scarcely credible, unless 
Fin could be proved to have lived to an antediluvian age, that he 
commanded an army against the Romans in 207, as has been pre- 
tended ; and that he defeated them under Caracalla, at the west end 
of Loch Fraochy "where there is a place named Dall-Chillin, or 
Fingal's burial-place." 

We have asked in a former section of this Essay, who has 
recorded this defeat of the Romans? and Graham answers, that it is 
not to be expected that Tacitus, Herodian, or Dion Cassius, would 
give us any account of the poems in which such events are recorded. 
True, not of the poems ; but why not of the battles in which the 
Romans were overcome, and the names of the generals against whom 
they fought ? They have told of Galgacus and Caractacus ; why not 
of a greater than they, the illustrious Fingal ? The Doctor employs 
a negative argument, and contends that " nothing has been adduced 
from ancient history, or even from the poems themselves, which can 
fairly be considered as contradictory to the position, that they belong 



154 

to the period which has been assigned." Here we are obliged to 
differ from the learned Doctor, for we think in almost every page we 
can discover palpable proofs of modern fabrication, and are well 
assured that they cannot be authenticated by a single contemporary 
witness. 

In the dissertation on the Era of Ossian annexed to his poems, 
Macpherson does not pretend to any thing like proof or evidence of 
their original date. His statements in prose are as loose and general 
as his descriptions in poetry. They have neither distinctness nor 
individuality ; they are as intangible as his ghosts, and when you 
approach them they fall into pieces and vanish away. He speaks of 
a persecution of the Druids that took place in the days of Fingal, but 
supports it by no authority ; of the Culdees ; of the exploits of Fingal 
when a youth, against Caracul, the king of the world ; and of Ossian 
when an old man, having seen " the Christians whom the persecution 
under Diocletian had driven beyond the pale of the Roman Empire." 
All this is mere invention without even the merit of plausibility. He 
accounts for the absence of religious ideas, by saying that " under 
the cloud of public hate, all that had any knowledge of the religion 
of the Druids became extinct, and the nation fell into the last 
degree of ignorance of their rites and ceremonies." Hence, even the 
bards, whom he describes as an inferior order of Druids, make no 
allusion to them in their poems. That a whole people should lose all 
knowledge of their peculiar religious rites and ceremonies in the 
course of one generation, is one of the most monstrous suppositions 
on record. It is also in direct contradiction to the fact, that the 
bards were the historians of their country. Wherefore should some 
of the most important topics which employ the pen of history be 
prohibited or left unnoticed ? Whatever reason there might be for 



155 

veiling the mysteries of Druidism, while it was the predominant 
religion, there could be none when it was crushed under the heel of 
persecution. The veil was then torn in pieces, and we are led by all 
historical analogy to conclude, that so far from concealing, it would 
be the object of its enemies to expose it to desecration. Though Dru- 
idism has been abolished by Christianity, some striking vestiges of 
that ancient superstition are extant at the present day. Doctor 
Graham falls into the same line of argument as Macpherson, and 
pursues it with more caution, but no better success : 

" It would seem," says he, " that the silence which prevails in these poems with regard 
to the higher mysteries of religion, instead of furnishing an argument against their authenticity, 
affords a strong presumption of their having been composed at the very time, in the very cir- 
cumstances, and by the very persons to whom they have been attributed. Indeed, had there 
been any account given in these poems of the secret rites and horrid immolations of the 
Beltein and the Samhin, there might have been some ground to question their authenticity." 

We might suppose from the mode in which the learned Doctor 
speaks of the higher mysteries, that the poem contained something 
relative to the minor rites of religion, though equally silent as to them 
all. Why might not the Celtic poet have described one of the 
" horrid immolations," as readily as a Spanish poet might describe 
an auto dafe, or a proselyted inquisitor the tortures of the inquisi- 
tion ? Granting, however, that they were strictly forbidden to speak 
of immolations and other rites which must have been well known to 
the whole nation, surely a poet might have borrowed an image from 
the Beltein and Samhuin fires, kindled as they were on every moun- 
tain, and in every district of the country.* 



* " Macpherson easily foresaw that this omission of the religious machinery would create 
mistrust, and unfortunately enhances our suspicion, by a most silly effort to account for it. 

x 2 



156 

Sir John Sinclair, in his dissertation, has brought forward a new 
argument in support of his favourite hypothesis.* He affirms that — 

" The existence of Swaran, and other personages mentioned in the poems of Ossian, is authen- 
ticated by Danish historians. With a view of ascertaining this point," says he, " I applied to 
the Rev. Mr. Rosing, pastor of the Danish church in London, from whom I received the fol- 
lowing particulars, from a work of great authority, namely, Sumh's History of Denmark." 

This author gives an account of Gram, a Norwegian prince, who 
espoused the cause of a princess who was persecuted by a rude suitor, 
the celebrated Swaran : 

" This Swaran was the son of Starno. He had carried on many wars in Ireland, where he 
had vanquished most of the heroes that opposed him, except Cuehullin, who, assisted by the 
Gaelic or Caledonian king, Fingal, in the present Scotland, not only defeated him, but even 
took him prisoner, but had the generosity to send him back again to his country ; and these 
exploits can never be effaced from men's memory, seeing they are celebrated in the most inimi- 
table manner by the Scotch poet, Ossian ; and Swaran has thereby obtained an honour which 
has been denied to so many heroes greater than he. With such an enemy Gram was now to 
contend. They met in single combat, and Swaran lost his life." 

The reader of this passage, we doubt not, has formed the same 
judgment of it as ourselves, that the only authority of the Danish 



'Before Ossian's time,' he tells us, 'the Druidic religion was set aside.' — But he goes on : 
'The power of the Druids to elect a Vergobretus became hereditary, and the established reli- 
gion was abolished.' This is the substance of his long-winded detail of the ruin of the 
Druids. All our remains of ancient history are against him, and what authority does he 
oppose to their testimony ? — His own ; his own only ! Who, ever, before the appearance of 
this new historical revelation, heard of a Vergobretus (so called) among the Caledonians ? 
or, indeed, among any other Celtic people, the Mdui, in Gaul, alone excepted. It is Caesar 
who gives us the name, and describes the office, and that in a corner only of the extensive 
country he conquered. Had Caesar never wrote, we should never hear of the name." — 
O'Conor's Dissertation. 

* Sir John Sinclair's Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Poems of Ossian, 
pp.lxii. lxiii. lxiv. 



157 

historian for the name of Swaran and his invasion of Ireland, is Mac- 
pherson's Ossian ! 

If there be any truth in the statement, why are we not referred to 
known creditable authorities ? No syllable of it is to be found in 
Torfaeus, though he speaks at considerable length, and with fine his- 
torical painting, equalling that of poetry, of the invasion of Ireland 
by certain northern princes, but at a period long subsequent to the 
days of Ossian ; nor in the Danish histories of king Eric, or Erpold 
Lindenbruch. The two latter mention Gram, the fifth in the Danish 
line of kings. Between him and Frothius hin Fredegode, the twenty-se- 
venth king, contemporary with Christ, were twenty-one reigns, which, 
at the moderate allowance of fifteen years to a reign, would make a 
period of 315 years, so that the interval between him and Fin Mac- 
Cumhal must have been at least 550 years. The date of Gram's reign 
is not marked, it seems, by Sumh, in loco ; but Rosing says, as Sir 
John Sinclair informs us, that he has elsewhere placed it in 240, 
whether before or after Christ is not mentioned, but it is intended 
that we should understand the latter, though the former must 
unquestionably be nearer the truth. 

Some benevolent critic might, perhaps, suggest that Sumh has 
spoken of a Gram different from him who is mentioned by Eric : but 
unfortunately for this suggestion, we find but one Danish monarch of 
that name, and his identity is fixed by the same remarkable fact 
recorded of him both by Sumh and Eric, namely, that he slew his 
enemy with sixteen brothers.* Eric says his enemy was the king 
of Suecia ; and Sumh calls him Swaran on the authority of Mac- 
pherson. Thus is one monstrous falsehood made to act recipro- 
cally in support of another. Sumh quotes Macpherson, and Sir 

* " Regem etiam Suecia? occidit, et sedecim fratres ejus," — Hist. Gentis Danorum, 
Erici Daniae regis. Lug. Elz. J 629, p. 54. 



158 

John Sinclair, in support of Macpherson, quotes Sumh. The critic, 
the historian, and the poet, are worthy of one another. Like the 
lovers in their impatience to be happy, they invoke the gods to an- 
nihilate both space and time. They synchronize names and ages that 
were separated by an interval of five or six centuries, and the Irish 
and Danish histories are equally falsified !* 

* Since the foregoing paragraph was written, we have consulted the Modern Universal 
History, and found that Gram, fifth king of Denmark, reigned ante Christum, 888, so that 
an interval of not less than eleven hundred years occurred between his days and those of Fin 
Mac-Cumhal ! The Viceroy of Gothland in Gram's days was named Swarim, not Swaran. 
Whether Macpherson took his name Swaran from Danish history, or, as we have conjectured, 
from Sturan in the Irish poem, let the reader decide. It is of no importance. " Gram dis- 
covering that Swarim was conspiring against his life, in order to raise himself to the throne of 
Sweden, challenged him to single combat, and slew him." — Mod. Un. Hist. vol. xxviii. 
p. 370. 

"In the preface to Macpherson's translation of Fragments of Ancient Poetry, the Garve of 
his text is called Swarthan, which he afterwards changed to Swaran, as he did Cuchulaid to 
Cuthullin."— High. Soc. Rep. App. p. 190, note. 

" His account of Swaran, king of Lochlyn's invasion of Ireland, in the third century, is 
of a piece with his other assertions ; when it is a fact indisputable, that the Scandinavians, 
who obtained the name of Lochlyns, made no incursions into Britain and Ireland until the 
eighth century, not long after the time that their intercourse with the Saxons made them 
expert navigators. He, however, who could assert proleptically, that hereditary right was 
established lineally among the ancient Scottish monarch's, and that minor kings conducted 
their administration by guardians, could as readily furnish Swaran in the third century, with 
floating castles spreading their wings of canvas, and threatening destruction to remote na- 
tions." — O'Conor's Dissertation. 

The author who has been just quoted farther observes, that "the poems of Fingal and 
Temora, are evidently founded on the romances and vulgar stories of the Tan-Bo- Cualgney 
war and those of Fiona Ereann. The poet, whoever he was, picked up many of the names of 
men and places to be found in those tales, and invention made up the rest. In digesting 
these poems into the present forms, chronology was overlooked, and the actors of different 
ages are all made coevals. The Tan-Bo-Cualgney war, wherein Cuchullin, Terdia, Conall- 
Cearnach, Fergus Mac-Roy, fyc, signalized themselves, was carried on some few years before 
the commencement of the Christian era. Fionn Mac-Cumhaill and the Fiana Ereann flou- 
rished in the third century. Mr. Macpherson or Ossian makes them contemporaries." 



159 

As for the name Swaran, we believe it to be an alteration of 
Sturan, a name found in the Irish poem L<LO) 6b)ti-6o)lb)ti, Bin- 
Bolbin. He was the son of Garav Glunach, and is described as a 
powerful enchanter from the east and the regions of cold, who, by 
the powerful music of his harp, charmed their weapons from the 
hands of the Fenian heroes : 

" Le pijm <x c/tujte Z&PZ 
Cajt <x n-aj/im af <\ l<xm<xjb." 

He bore a harp, at whose dread sound, 
Our swords dropp'd harmless to the ground. 

Others of Macpherson's names are found in the Fenian tales; but 
the great source whence he drew, is Toland's History of the Druids. 
From this history, Laing observes, that " his names and explanations 
are transcribed verbatim." That he found his Inishuna there in 
Inisoen, is pretty apparent, and also his Gelchossa (Ir. Geal-chos- 
saigh.) This last, says Toland, " was a Druidess, and her name is of 
the Homerical strain, signifying white-legged"* a strain that would 
at once arrest the attention of Macpherson, and cause him to transfer 
it to his own centos. But had he paid the slightest attention to 
genuine Irish history, and not been obstinately resolved on falsifying 
it, to favour his own ill-constructed fictions, he would never have 
resuscitated Cuchullin, after he had been quietly entombed for up- 
wards of two centuries ; and changed his country, to make him the 
contemporary and the compatriot of his Caledonian Achilles ! Mac- 
pherson, conscious of his own literary crimes, takes every opportunity 
of vilifying our Irish historians, that by destroying their credibility, 



Toland's History of the Druids, p. 23. 



160 

he may establish his own ; and at the very time he is pilfering names 
and incidents from their writings, to work into his own heterogeneous 
tissue of falsehoods, he turns upon them with matchless ingratitude, 
and accuses them of the very enormities which he is himself com- 
mitting ! 

It is justly observed in Charles O'Conor's dissertation, that "the mo- 
dern sentiments, manners, customs, and allusions they contain, affix 
them to modern times ; and the ignorance of chronology, geography, 
and ancient history, shews that Ossian, the son of Fingal, was in no 
degree fit to personate Oisin, the son of Fionn, in the description of 
things to which that prince was coeval. The son of Fingal, therefore, 
lived near our own times, and it is best known to Mr. Macpherson, 
whether he is not in the whole or in part, alive to this day, (1766.) 
Be it as it may, be he living, dying, or dead ; entire, maimed, or 
interpolated ; his Erse language betrays him, and gives us the land 
of his nativity with as much precision, as the shadow on Allah's dial 
did the time of the day ; and pity it is, that the parity does not hold 
out in the other particular, as the sun of history would in that case 
go ten degrees back on Mr. Macpherson's chronological time-plate, to 
gain poor Ossian a long poetical day, and establish a monarchy of 
Scots in Britain, five hundred years before it really commenced." 

The author intended to give an additional section on the manners, 
and to direct the reader's attention to many revolting incongruities, 
still farther illustrative of Macpherson's forgeries. But after what 
has been already submitted to consideration, this would surely be 
superfluous. The incongruities are too numerous and too glaring to 
escape the observation of the most superficial reader. The wonder is 
great that Macpherson could ever have deceived the reflecting and 
intelligent ;. it would be still greater, should there, at this day, be 
found an individual of name and character, willing to stand forth as 



161 

his advocate. Of all literary impostors, Macpherson has a just claim to 
precedence. Psalmanazar, who pretended that he had brought a new 
language from Formosa to Europe, falls far behind him. Chatterton's 
ascription of the works of his own splendid genius to Rowley, a priest 
of the fifteenth century, was a comparatively innocent device to arrest 
public interest. Lauder's attempt to. rob Milton of his glory, by the 
fabrication of Latin verses, which he affirmed the great poet, as a 
plagiary, had transferred to his Paradise Lost, was sufficiently infa- 
mous. But Macpherson, ambitious of being more deeply "damned 
to everlasting fame," not contented with purloining many of the 
choicest gems of Irish, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew poetry, falsified 
the histories of Rome, of Denmark, of Scotland, and above all, of 
Ireland; and in violation of the laws of time and place, and in defi- 
ance of all written documents, dared with matchless effrontery, to 
give his own crude, unfounded inventions, to the world as authentic 
history ! Ut quisque est meritus, prcemium ferat . 



Note. — Since this Essay was prepared for the Press, a Member of the Royal Irish 
Academy informed the author, that another work on the same subject has been published 
by the Rev. Edward Davies, F. R. S. L. This work the author has not seen, nor has he even 
learned what views Mr. Davies has taken of the subject. If, therefore, the reader of the 
two works should discover in them any coincidence of thought or of argument, he will con- 
sider it as accidental, and remember with Doctor Johnson, that " there are occasions in which 
all reasonable men will think alike." 

Dublin, May 4, 1830. 









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